{"title":"Contagious Counter-Worlds: On the Idea of an Alternative in German Primary Healthcare.","authors":"Lucia Mair","doi":"10.1007/s11013-026-09971-6","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s11013-026-09971-6","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article discusses experimental attempts and imaginaries of interdisciplinary healthcare in alternative group practices, focusing on health activist movements in contemporary Germany and their predecessors in the 1970s-to-1980s, West German 'Health Movement'. As new forms of working in primary care, these practices stand for reimagining medical practice as a sociopolitical institution, and its possibilities for remaking patient and doctor subjectivities. Both times, this activism is part of broader developments of social-cultural and political change, and pervaded with a stubborn, critical optimism in its potential to foster societal transformations that extend beyond the group practice as a physical place. I explore these experimental projects through Davina Cooper's (2013) concept of \"everyday utopia\", arguing for closer attention to the affects, desires and attachments healthcare professionals, and in particular doctors project onto them. Drawing on utopian studies and health activism literature, I take up Cooper's distinction between \"imagination\" and \"actualization\" to argue how, regardless of its success, experimenting with alternative ways of practising and working together makes current conditions in medicine bearable for those involved.</p>","PeriodicalId":47634,"journal":{"name":"Culture Medicine and Psychiatry","volume":"50 1","pages":"10"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2026-02-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12861990/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146100737","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Living in a World Without Respect: A Processual-Relational Approach to Young Women's Suicide in South Korea.","authors":"Jung Eun Kwon","doi":"10.1007/s11013-026-09973-4","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s11013-026-09973-4","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article examines suicidality-including suicidal thoughts, plans, and attempts-among young women in South Korea through a processual-relational approach that I develop to foreground lived experiences rather than static risk factors. While public health and medical research often reduce suicide to quantifiable variables, even when considering social factors, I argue that suicidality emerges from the accumulation of challenges and individuals' shifting relationships to society. To support this claim, I analyze three life stories drawn from 15 months of ethnographic fieldwork (2021-2022) in South Korea, including interviews with women in their twenties and thirties. Over time, my interlocutors came to recognize that their suffering arises from long-term struggles with patriarchal environments and pressures of normative life paths, generating profound disillusionment and hopelessness toward Korean society. To better understand these experiences, the processual-relational approach moves beyond analyzing structural factors like patriarchy and rigid social norms by tracing the cumulative processes through which individuals gradually (re)interpret sources of suffering as structural rather than merely personal. This process fosters awareness of their marginalized position and cultivates a renewed relationship with society. By proposing this approach, this study contributes to scholarship on suicide by emphasizing temporality, relationality, and individuals' active processes of meaning-making.</p>","PeriodicalId":47634,"journal":{"name":"Culture Medicine and Psychiatry","volume":"50 1","pages":"8"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2026-01-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146031248","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Helene Speyer, David Roe, Sue Estroff, John Strauss
{"title":"Negative Capability May Solve Psychiatry's Credibility Crisis.","authors":"Helene Speyer, David Roe, Sue Estroff, John Strauss","doi":"10.1007/s11013-025-09961-0","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s11013-025-09961-0","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Psychiatry is facing a crisis of credibility, fueled by public disillusionment with inflated claims about the etiological understanding of mental disorders. Overconfident narratives have emerged from a vicious cycle of certainty: psychiatry's desire to be recognized as a \"real\" medical discipline, the public's longing for clear answers and quick fixes, and the vested interests of the pharmaceutical industry. Breaking this cycle requires that mental health professionals reintroduce uncertainty as a foundational premise and cultivate negative capability, described as the ability to remain comfortable with ambiguity and doubt, both individually and collectively. This shift can be nurtured intellectually through conceptual competence and emotionally through engagement with the arts, particularly literature. Uncertainty invites complexity, offering a richer understanding of the interplay of biological, psychological, and social dimensions of mental health. By learning to tolerate and even value uncertainty, psychiatry can rebuild trust and renew its credibility.</p>","PeriodicalId":47634,"journal":{"name":"Culture Medicine and Psychiatry","volume":"50 1","pages":"7"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2026-01-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146031326","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Negotiating Stigma: Comparing the Experiences of Self-Identified and Clinically Diagnosed Men with OCD in Russia.","authors":"Elizaveta Shmidova, Oxana Mikhaylova","doi":"10.1007/s11013-026-09972-5","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s11013-026-09972-5","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This cross-sectional qualitative study investigates how Russian men with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) experience and manage mental health stigma, focusing on differences between those with a clinical diagnosis and those who self-identify with the disorder. Through in-depth interviews with eleven participants, the research explores meaning-making, disclosure practices, coping strategies, and the impact of masculine norms on help-seeking. Findings reveal that self-identified men often leverage the OCD label for personal understanding and peer support, while clinically diagnosed men gain validation but encounter heightened stigma due to their formal status. Both groups employ selective disclosure and narrative reframing to navigate societal pressures. The study highlights the interplay between personal identity, social recognition, and institutional legitimacy, underscoring the need for gender-sensitive and culturally tailored mental health interventions in Russia. This work contributes to understanding mental health stigma negotiation in understudied populations and settings, offering insights into how diagnostic status, gender norms, and cultural-historical context shape lived experiences of mental illness.</p>","PeriodicalId":47634,"journal":{"name":"Culture Medicine and Psychiatry","volume":"50 1","pages":"6"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2026-01-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146020016","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Adult ADHD in Cultural Ecosocial Niches: Exploring the Rise of Adult ADHD in Context.","authors":"Jesse N Ruse, Paul Rhodes","doi":"10.1007/s11013-025-09958-9","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s11013-025-09958-9","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Amid rising adult ADHD diagnoses in recent decades, this article introduces a cultural ecosocial niche theory of adult ADHD, suggesting that symptoms emerge within specific cultural and social contexts rather than solely from neurobiological differences. Through in-depth interviews with seven Australian women recently diagnosed with adult ADHD, complemented by photo-voice methodology, we show how ADHD symptoms fluctuated markedly across different social interactions. The study found that participants actively construct and inhabit cultural ecosocial niches where their traits achieve a functional fit with their social and cultural environment. These niches ranged from adopting the macro-cultural framework of 'neurodiversity' to build affirming identities and communities, to finding micro-social occupational niches in fast-paced roles where their cognitive style became an advantage. Each niche was sustained by a reinforcing feedback loop, where the environment (such as a supportive social group or a demanding job) reinforced the very traits and beliefs that initially attracted them to that niche. This study challenges the notion that psychiatric symptoms are confined solely within a person or solely outside in the environment. Instead, it provides a concrete example of how symptoms and their meanings appear at the intersection of both. These findings illuminate the complex ways socio-cultural settings can both constrain and empower, while highlighting implications for how we conceptualise and address adult ADHD in an era of increasing diagnosis.</p>","PeriodicalId":47634,"journal":{"name":"Culture Medicine and Psychiatry","volume":"50 1","pages":"3"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2026-01-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12815985/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145999396","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Between Scopic Jouissance and Incorporation: Mukbang as a Digital Site of Psychic Tension.","authors":"Elie Solal, Anna Cognet-Kayem","doi":"10.1007/s11013-025-09965-w","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s11013-025-09965-w","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Mukbang, a digital practice that originated in South Korea and has since become a global phenomenon, features individuals consuming large quantities of food on camera while engaging with online audiences. While existing studies have approached Mukbang through sociological, nutritional, and media-theoretical lenses, its unconscious appeal remains largely unexamined. This article offers a psychoanalytic reading of Mukbang as a mediated space where unconscious processes of desire, lack, and embodiment are activated. Drawing on five in-depth qualitative interviews with regular viewers, we explore how visual consumption engages psychic dynamics such as scopic jouissance, incorporation, and identification, often marked by ambivalence-between fascination and disgust, control and surrender, satisfaction and frustration. By integrating clinical psychoanalytic theory with cultural analysis, we argue that Mukbang functions as a contemporary dispositif for psychic regulation, allowing viewers to negotiate tensions around food, the body, and symbolic loss within a digital framework. This study contributes to broader interdisciplinary conversations on media, affect, and the cultural shaping of subjectivity.</p>","PeriodicalId":47634,"journal":{"name":"Culture Medicine and Psychiatry","volume":"50 1","pages":"4"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2026-01-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145999456","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Negotiating Care and Coercion: Parental Experiences of Involuntary Psychiatric Hospitalization in Japan.","authors":"Katsuya Kushihara","doi":"10.1007/s11013-025-09962-z","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s11013-025-09962-z","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article explores how parents in Japan navigate the entangled terrain of caregiving and coercion in the context of involuntary psychiatric hospitalization. Drawing on qualitative interviews with parents whose children were hospitalized without consent, this study foregrounds the complex moral and emotional labor that caregiving entails under conditions of limited institutional support and deep-rooted familial responsibility. The analysis identified two recurring patterns in post-hospitalization relationships: one in which caregiving bonds are sustained but increasingly strained and the other in which hospitalization catalyzes shifts in family dynamics, enabling new forms of distance or reconfiguration. These trajectories were shaped not only by the child's condition but also by the presence or absence of external support, including care quality, and by parents' internal struggles with guilt, obligation, and ambivalence. By situating these narratives within Japan's long-standing reliance on the family as the primary site of psychiatric care, this article contributes to the debate on care, agency, and coercion in psychiatric contexts. It calls for closer attention to how families navigate moral uncertainty and negotiate caregiving roles within a system where family involvement is not only common but often prioritized in the admission process, particularly in cases of hospitalization for medical care and protection.</p>","PeriodicalId":47634,"journal":{"name":"Culture Medicine and Psychiatry","volume":"50 1","pages":"1"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2026-01-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145999453","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"What We Don't Speak of: Exploring the Impact of Historical Trauma and Discrimination on the Health and Well-Being of Sweden Finns.","authors":"Mattias Strand, Mona Lindqvist","doi":"10.1007/s11013-026-09969-0","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s11013-026-09969-0","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Sweden Finns are one of the five officially recognized national minority groups in Sweden. Approximately 3.6 percent of the total Swedish population are either born in Finland or have at least one Finnish-born parent; however, since Swedish national minority legislation explicitly applies a self-identification principle rather than objective criteria in determining who belongs to a national minority group, this figure might not correspond to the number of people who actually view themselves as Sweden Finns. On group level, Sweden Finns have been socioeconomically underprivileged in comparison with the Swedish majority population, and tend to be worse off in terms of somatic and mental health. The aim of this study was to explore the many ways in which official minority status, as well as more subtle and systemic processes of minoritization, affect health and healthcare encounters in the Sweden Finnish population in Stockholm, Sweden. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 adults self-identifying as Sweden Finns. The interview data were analyzed using a thematic analysis framework. In all phases of the study, consultation was sought with a reference group representing the Sweden Finnish community. Three main themes were identified: (1) In-between identities, (2) The meaning of language, and (3) Lack of understanding in Swedish society. The participants underscore the importance of Finnish traditions, food, and customs for their personal well-being. Even so, the findings also point to the many ways in which transgenerational trauma experiences and marginalization contribute to the health challenges faced by Sweden Finns today. The study sheds light on the complex layers of historical trauma and ongoing discrimination and their impact on health and healthcare encounters, underscoring the need for cultural sensitivity within Swedish healthcare and Swedish society.</p>","PeriodicalId":47634,"journal":{"name":"Culture Medicine and Psychiatry","volume":"50 1","pages":"5"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2026-01-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12816104/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145999459","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Searching for Dwelling: Autism, Adolescence, and the Threat of \"No Man's Land\".","authors":"Anne Toft Ramsbøl","doi":"10.1007/s11013-025-09959-8","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s11013-025-09959-8","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>What does it mean to come of age on the spectrum for autistic adolescents and their families? And how might this transitional stage be related to phenomenological questions of dwelling? As part of a broader research project on family life, autism, and coming-of-age in Denmark, this paper explores the case of the autistic adolescent Leo and his family to illuminate how families with autistic adolescents experience and respond to the coming-of-age process. Engaging with perspectives from anthropology of autism, disability, and critical phenomenology including the notion of dwelling, the paper demonstrates how coming-of-age poses pressing demands of (re)imagining, and searching for spaces of belonging and possibilities for becoming in both present and future horizons. These demands are often negotiated and shaped within a world that is dominated by neuronormative and chrononormative expectations, where the dynamics of misfitting are seldom a question of chance. I argue that families like Leo's face not only practical and bureaucratic hurdles related to coming-of-age, but profound existential concerns. They face what I call an intensified dwelling problem of reimagining and searching for ways to feel at home in the world.</p>","PeriodicalId":47634,"journal":{"name":"Culture Medicine and Psychiatry","volume":"50 1","pages":"2"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2026-01-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12816089/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145999432","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Clare Killikelly, Lea-Martina Christen, Simon Groen, John S Ogrodniczuk, Andreas Maercker, Geert E Smid, Eva Heim
{"title":"Feasibility, Acceptability and Clinical Utility of the Bereavement and Grief Cultural Formulation Interview for Prolonged Grief Disorder.","authors":"Clare Killikelly, Lea-Martina Christen, Simon Groen, John S Ogrodniczuk, Andreas Maercker, Geert E Smid, Eva Heim","doi":"10.1007/s11013-025-09927-2","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s11013-025-09927-2","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Prolonged grief disorder (PGD) is a new diagnostic category included in global diagnostic classification systems for mental disorders. However, PGD can only be diagnosed if the severity and duration exceed socio-cultural norms. Here, we present a new supplementary module to the DSM-5 Cultural Formulation Interview: the Bereavement and Grief Cultural Formulation Interview (BG-CFI). The BG-CFI was developed to help clinicians provide a culturally informed diagnosis and guide treatment planning.We investigated the feasibility, acceptability, and clinical utility of the BG-CFI. Two participant groups (11 refugees, asylum seekers or migrants experiencing bereavement and 3 clinicians) took part in the study and were interviewed using open-ended questions on measures of feasibility, acceptability, and clinical utility. A step-by-step procedure was followed: (1) Clinicians and/or researchers conducted the BG-CFI with participants; (2) Debriefing interviews were conducted separately with clinicians and with bereaved participants.The BG-CFI was found to be a feasible, acceptable, and clinically useful tool for both bereaved participants and clinicians. Where clinicians found the interview difficult to conduct (i.e. lack of conceptual clarity or triggering emotional distress) specific changes were made to the interview format such as prompts for further questioning or recommendations for withholding or adapting questions. The BG-CFI would offer a useful complement for a reliable assessment of PGD in clinical settings working with cultural incongruity.</p>","PeriodicalId":47634,"journal":{"name":"Culture Medicine and Psychiatry","volume":" ","pages":"1150-1167"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12745315/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144733973","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}