The Invisible Culture: On the Meaning and Value of the Cultural Approach to Psychiatry

Magdalena SZPUNAR

Abstract

Among the main problems faced by psychiatry is the tendency to reduce patients to their biology by disregarding the cultural and social contexts in which they function. The followers of anti-psychiatry movement point out that mental dysfunctions are rooted in the existential context of an individual rather than in the structure of the human organism. Such an approach to pathogenic mechanisms makes it possible to reduce the authoritarian attitude inherent in the role played by the psychiatrist. Comprehensive care for the mentally ill requires, above all, an in-depth understanding of the patients’ sociological and psychological context as well as respect for their dignity, regardless of their mental health problems. Their experience of the pathological condition also needs consideration. Important achievements of anti-psychiatry include a revision of the categories of health and disease, a recognition of the vague character of such a classification, combined with the understanding of health and disease as conditions in-between the physical and the mental, a rejection of biological reductionism, and a change in the perception of mental disorders and in the approach to medication as the dominant treatment method.