Beyond the Medical Model

The Culture of Our Discontent: Beyond the Medical Model of Mental Illness by Meredith Small

I’ve been interested lately in books like The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down and Unstrange Minds: Remapping the World of Autism that look at different cultural perspectives on mental illness, impairment and communication disorders that Americans tend to see and treat with a medical model, and, increasingly, with medication.

Anthropologist Meredith F. Small’s book is an overview of different perspectives on mental illness, including insights from evolutionary psychology, primatology, nutrition and other cultures. I found this interesting, but pretty basic. The book is perhaps too brief to cover such a range of topics in any depth.