Sylhet, the area of Bangladesh most closely associated with
overseas migration, has seen an increase in remittances sent home
from abroad, introducing new inequalities. Social change has also
been mediated by the global forces of Western biomedicine and
orthodox Islam. This book examines the effects of these modernizing
trends on mental health and on local, traditional healing as the
new inequalities have exacerbated existing social tensions and led
to increased vulnerability to mental illness. It is the young women
of Sylhet who are most affected. The global economy has increased
competition for resources and led to marriage being seen as a route
to economic advancement. Parents prefer to give their daughters in
marriage to families that will widen their social contacts and
enhance their economic and social standing. Accordingly, the young
wife's outsider status (and hence vulnerability to mental illness)
has increased as it is no longer customary to give daughters in
marriage to local kin. Yet, patients and their families do not work
out tensions passively. They are active agents in the construction
of their own diagnosis. The extent to which patients act or are
acted upon is an investigation that runs throughout the book.
Alyson Callan is a psychiatrist and anthropologist. She
currently works as a consultant psychiatrist in Brent for the
Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust.
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