The place of the social in psychiatry: from structural determinants to the ecology of mind.

Purpose: Social psychiatry considers the ways in which mental disorders are shaped by particular social environments. This paper outlines a cultural-ecosocial approach that emphasizes the ways in which cultural meaning and practices mediate the effects of the social determinants of mental health on the mechanisms of illness, disorder, and disease.

Methods: Selective review of literature and conceptual synthesis.

Results: "The social" in psychiatry stands for the structures and dynamics of groups of people interacting on multiple scales from the intimate sphere of couple and family to neighbourhoods, communities, societies, nations, and transnational or global networks. These interactions create social contexts, niches, forms of belonging, identities, institutions, and larger systems that influence the causes, expression, course, and outcome of mental disorders. Characterizing these systems requires theory that considers the ways in which social systems constitute dynamical systems that configure material, energetic, and informational flows that give rise to human experience. Unpacking the health consequences of these local and extended systems requires an interdisciplinary approach that considers: (1) the social psychological, psychophysiological, and sociophysiological processes that mediate the impact of the environment on body, mind, and person; (2) the interactional dynamics of social systems that give rise to structural adversity and inequity as well as resilience; and (3) the recursive effects of self-understanding, agency and subjectivity.

Conclusions: In the cultural-ecosocial view, "the social" is shorthand for interactional processes that constitute material and symbolic structures that provide cultural affordances, constraints, and challenges as well as resources for healing, recovery, and adaptation.