Tibetan Medicine, Buddhism and Psychiatry

This book presents research based on two six-month periods of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Darjeeling during 2011 and 2012. It utilizes four case studies to illustrate lay perceptions of different mental health conditions and their causes and treatments, juxtaposed with Tibetan textual and biomedical explanations. These expanations combine with background interviews of lay Tibetans, as well as monastic practitioners, Tibetan amchi, and biomedical doctors, to help draw out the complexities of the situation for individuals affected by different experiences of mental illness.

This book is part of the Ethnographic Studies in Medical Anthropology Series, edited by Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew Strathern, Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh.