Schizophrenia has long puzzled researchers in the fields of psychiatric medicine and anthropology. Why is it that the rates of developing schizophrenia--long the poster child for the biomedical model of psychiatric illness--are low in some countries and not in others? And why do migrants to Western countries find that they are at higher risk for this disease when they arrive? T.M. Luhrmann and Jocelyn Marrow argue it is because the root causes for schizophrenia are not only biological, but also sociocultural. This book gives an intimate, personal account of those living with serious psychotic disorder in the U.S., India, Africa, and Southeast Asia. It introduces the notion that social defeat--the physical or symbolic defeat of one person by another--is a core mechanism in the increased risk for psychotic illness. Furthermore, 'care as usual' as it occurs in the U.S. actually increases the likelihood of social defeat, whereas 'care as usual' in a country like India diminishes it.

长期以来，精神分裂症一直让精神医学和人类学领域的研究人员感到困惑。为什么精神分裂症的发病率--长期以来一直是精神病的生物医学模式的典型代表--在一些国家很低，而在另一些国家则不然？为什么移民到西方国家后发现他们患这种疾病的风险更高？T.M.鲁尔曼和乔斯林-马罗认为，这是因为精神分裂症的根本原因不仅是生物性的，而且是社会文化性的。本书对那些生活在美国、印度、非洲和东南亚的严重精神障碍患者进行了亲密的个人描述。它提出了这样一个概念：社会失败--一个人在身体上或象征性地被另一个人打败--是精神病风险增加的一个核心机制。此外，在美国发生的 "常规护理 "实际上增加了社会挫败的可能性，而在印度这样的国家，"常规护理 "则减少了这种可能性。