'Culture and Depression'

Dr. Arthur M. Kleinman , a psychiatrist who is an expert on depression, spoke on "Culture and Depression: Studies in Anthropology and Cross-Cultural Psychiatry of Affect and Disorder" on April 1. His appearance was sponsored by the College of Social Sciences and the Department of Anthropology.

A medical doctor, Kleinman is the Maude and Lillian Presley Professor of Medical Anthropology and Professor of Psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School , where he chaired the Department of Social Medicine from 1991 to 2000.  He is also Professor of Social Anthropology at Harvard University .

Kleinman's research includes: international mental health; cross-cultural studies of depression; the experience of chronic illness; the anthropology of social suffering; and social health policy concerning the overlap of social and health problems including substance abuse, violence and trauma; and ethnicity and health.  He has conducted research in Chinese society since 1968. 

He directed the World Mental Health Report and was a member of the Steering Committee of the American Psychiatric Association-National Institute of Mental Health Taskforce on Culture and Psychiatric Diagnosis and Co-Chair of the Committee on Culture, Health and Human Development for the Social Science Research Council.  He has authored more than 175 articles and five books, edited or co-edited 17 volumes, and founded the journal Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, which he edited for a decade.

Kleinman has been a Guggenheim Fellow and a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.  Since 1978, he has co-directed an NIMH-funded Postdoctoral Training Program in Clinically Applied Anthropology. He has expertise in international, cross-cultural and anthropological aspects of mental illness.

His honors include: an honorary doctorate from York University in Canada ; this year's Franz Boaz Award from the American Anthropological Association; the Welcome Prize in Medical Anthropology, and membership in the Institute of Medicine , National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Academy of Physician and Patient.

Dr. Kleinman has practiced as a psychiatrist and is an expert on depression.  He has taught several generations of Harvard medical students such subjects as the social roots of disease, the doctor-patient relationship, culture and health care, the moral basis of medical practice, and he co-teaches a new course on medicine and religion.