Laurence J. Kirmayer Explained

Laurence J. Kirmayer (born October 23, 1952 in Montreal, Quebec) is a Canadian psychiatrist and internationally recognized expert in culture and mental health. He is Distinguished James McGill Professor and Director of the Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, McGill University.[1] He is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences[2] and the Royal Society of Canada (Academy of Social Sciences)[3]

From 1991 through 2022, he was Editor-in-Chief of Transcultural Psychiatry, the official journal of the Section on Transcultural Psychiatry of the World Psychiatric Association. Currently, he is Editor-in-Chief Emeritus.[4]

From 2021 to 2023, he was President of the Society for Psychological Anthropology[5] of the American Anthropological Association.

Career

Kirmayer completed undergraduate training in psychology (1971-1974) and in medicine (1974-78) at McGill University and an internship and residency in psychiatry (1978–81) at the University of California, Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, California. He is a Principal Investigator at the Lady Davis Institute,[6] and Director of the Culture & Mental Health Research Unit at the Institute of Community and Family Psychiatry, Jewish General Hospital in Montreal.

In 1991, he founded the annual McGill Summer Program in Social and Cultural Psychiatry.[7] In Canada, he also founded the national Network for Aboriginal Mental Health Research,[8] the Cultural Consultation Service,[9] [10] and the online Multicultural Mental Health Resource Centre[11] [12] which are based at the Institute of Community and Family Psychiatry of the Jewish General Hospital.

Work

His work has contributed to the development of culturally responsive services and interventions in primary care mental health and psychiatry.[13] He has conducted research on the impact of culture and social context on common mental disorders (depression, anxiety, somatization, dissociation, and trauma-related disorders), symptom experience, and processes of resilience, healing and recovery among Indigenous peoples, migrants and marginalized groups. His most recent work has applied theories of embodied and enactive cognitive science to understand the social determinants of health and illness experience and resilience.

He has done epidemiological and ethnographic research on the mental health of Indigenous peoples in collaboration with communities and Indigenous scholars.[14] This includes studies on Inuit concepts of mental health and illness,[15] [16] risk and protective factors for suicide among Inuit youth,[17] Indigenous concepts of resilience,[18] [19] and mental health promotion for Indigenous youth.[20] With Gail Guthrie Valaskakis, he edited the first book integrating social science and clinical perspectives on the mental health of Indigenous peoples in Canada.[21]

Much of his early research concerned somatization,[22] the bodily expression of psychiatric, psychological or emotional distress and medically unexplained symptoms.[23] He clarified several distinct definitions of somatization[24] and conducted clinical and community epidemiological studies of the cognitive and social correlates of somatoform disorders.[25] With sociologist James Robbins, he co-developed the Symptom Interpretation Questionnaire,[26] a measure of somatic symptom attribution that predicts high levels of health care utilization, persistent somatization, hypochondriacal worry, low rates of physician detection of psychosocial distress, and chronicity of fatigue in primary care patients.[27]

He also co-developed the McGill Illness Narrative Interview,[28] a method for eliciting and studying explanatory models and help-seeking, which has been translated into over 15 languages and widely used in global mental health and clinical ethnographic research.[29]

He has worked to translate insights from cultural psychology and anthropology into new approaches to thinking about culture and social context in clinical settings.[30] This includes establishing an innovative Cultural Consultation Service (CCS)[31] to address cultural diversity in mental health care in primary and specialty care sectors. The CCS model has been adopted in Australia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the US and UK.[32] Analysis of CCS data demonstrated the impact of systematic attention to culture on diagnosis and treatment[33] and contributed to the development of the DSM-5 Cultural Formulation Interview.[34] He led workgroups for the Canadian Collaboration for Immigrant and Refugee Health developing guidelines for the primary care prevent and treatment of common mental health problems.[35] For the Canadian Psychiatric Association, he has led workgroups developing guidelines for training in cultural psychiatry[36] and on cultural issues in the psychiatric training of international medical graduates.[37]

Kirmayer also has made contributions to medical and psychological anthropology and the philosophy of psychiatry.[38] He has collaborated on applying 4-E cognitive science to psychiatry and developing a model of cultural affordances in computational neuroscience.[39] [40] He has worked extensively on questions of the cognitive and social process of meaning-making in illness experience, developing theories of metaphoric embodiment and enactment of symptom experience and its ritual and therapeutic transformation.[41] [42] Most recently, he has advocated for an integrative ecosocial approach to understanding mental health and illness.[43] [44]

Awards

Bibliography

His publications include over 400 articles and book chapters as well as several co-edited volumes:

Lectures

Video recordings of Kirmayer's lectures in cultural psychiatry are available online[53]

Video interviews as part of an oral history of medical anthropology from Anthropologie et Societé are also available [54] [55] [56] [57] [58]

See also

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry. Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry.
  2. Web site: McGill Heath News CAHS 2023. 14 November 2013 .
  3. Web site: Royal Society of Canada Members Directory. rsc-src.ca.
  4. Web site: Transcultural Psychiatry: SAGE Journals.
  5. Web site: Society for Psychological Anthropology of the American Anthropological Association.
  6. Web site: Lady Davis Institute - Principal Investigators.
  7. Web site: Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry .
  8. http://www.namhr.ca
  9. Web site: Cultural Consultation Service .
  10. Web site: Experience in Cultural Consultation Opens New Era in the Clinic.
  11. http://www.mmhrc.ca
  12. Web site: McGill researchers launch Multicultural Mental Health Resource Centre .
  13. Kirmayer . Laurence J. . Jarvis . G. Eric . Culturally responsive services as a path to equity in mental healthcare . HealthcarePapers . 2019 . 18 . 2 . 11–23 . 10.12927/hcpap.2019.25925. 31596698 . 204028942 .
  14. Web site: Arctic Council delegates ponder what works best in mental health. Nunatsiaq News. March 30, 2015.
  15. https://www.mcgill.ca/tcpsych/files/tcpsych/Report4.pdf
  16. Book: Kirmayer . Laurence J. . Fletcher . Christopher . Watt . Robert . Kirmayer . Laurence J. . Valaskakis . Gail g. . Locating the ecocentric self: Inuit concepts of mental health and illness . 2009 . UBC Press . 289–314.
  17. Kirmayer . Laurence J. . Boothroyd . Lucy J. . Hodgins . S. . Attempted suicide among Inuit youth: Psychosocial correlates and implications for prevention . Canadian Journal of Psychiatry . 1998 . 43 . 8 . 816–822 . 10.1177/070674379804300806 . 9806088 . 22166295 .
  18. Web site: ICIHRP Roots of Resilience Project .
  19. Kirmayer . Laurence J. . Dandeneau . S. . Marshall . E. . Phillips . M.K. . Williamson . Karla . Rethinking resilience from indigenous perspectives . Canadian Journal of Psychiatry . 2011 . 56 . 2 . 84–91 . 10.1177/070674371105600203 . 21333035 . 7549749 . free .
  20. Web site: Listening to One Another to Grow Strong (LTOA): Mental Health Promotion for Indigenous Youth .
  21. Book: Kirmayer . Laurence J. . Valaskakis . Gail Guthrie . Healing Traditions: The Mental Health of Aboriginal Peoples in Canada . 2009 . University of British Columbia Press . 978-0774815246.
  22. Book: Kirmayer . Laurence J. . Robbins . James M. . Current Concepts of Somatization: Research and Clinical Perspectives . 1991 . American Psychiatric Press . 0880481986.
  23. Kirmayer. LJ. Groleau. D. Looper. KJ. Dao. MD. Explaining medically unexplained symptoms.. Canadian Journal of Psychiatry. October 2004. 49. 10. 663–72. 15560312. 10.1177/070674370404901003. free.
  24. Kirmayer . Laurence J. . Robbins . James M. . Three forms of somatization in primary care: prevalence, co-occurrence, and sociodemographic characteristics . The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease . 1991 . 179 . 1 . 647–655 . 10.1097/00005053-199111000-00001 . 1940887 . 46182116 .
  25. Kirmayer . L.J. . Young . A. . Culture and somatization: clinical, epidemiological, and ethnographic perspectives . Psychosomatic Medicine . 1998 . 60 . 4 . 420–430 . 10.1097/00006842-199807000-00006 . 9710287 . 35114279 .
  26. Robbins . James M. . Kirmayer . Laurence J. . Attributions of common somatic symptoms . Psychological Medicine . 1991 . 21 . 4 . 1029–1045 . 10.1017/S0033291700030026 . 1780396 . 22021905 .
  27. Bailer . J . Witthoeft . M. . Bayern . C. . Rist . F. . Syndrome stability and psychological predictors of symptom severity in idiopathic environmental intolerance and somatoform disorders . Psychological Medicine . 2007 . 37 . 2 . 271–281 . 10.1017/S0033291706009354 . 17109778 . 29130212 .
  28. Groleau . Danielle . Young . Allan . Kirmayer . Laurence J. . The McGill Illness Narrative Interview (MINI): an interview schedule to elicit meanings and modes of reasoning related to illness experience . Transcultural Psychiatry . 2006 . 43 . 4 . 671–691 . 10.1177/1363461506070796. 17166953 . 20732761 .
  29. Web site: McGill Illness Narrative Interview (MINI). Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry.
  30. Canadian Psychiatrists Confront Cultural-Competency Challenges . 10.1176/pn.39.22.00390001 . 2004 . Arehart-Treichel . Joan . Psychiatric News . 39 . 22 . 1–19 .
  31. Book: Kirmayer. Laurence J.. Guzder. Jaswant. Rousseau. Cécile. Cultural Consultation: Encountering the Other in Mental Health Care. 2014. Springer. New York. 9781461476146.
  32. Web site: International Consortium for Cultural Consultation. International Consortium for Cultural Consultation.
  33. Adeponle . Ademola . Thombs . Brett D. . Groleau . Danielle . Jarvis . G. Eric . Kirmayer . Laurence J. . Using the cultural formulation to resolve uncertainty in diagnoses of psychosis among ethnoculturally diverse patients . Psychiatric Services . 2012 . 63 . 2 . 147–153 . 10.1176/appi.ps.201100280. 22302332 .
  34. Book: Lewis-Fernandez . Roberto . Aggarwal . Neil Krishan . Hinton . Larson . Hinton . Devon E. . Kirmayer . Laurence J. . DSM-5 Handbook on the Cultural Formulation Interview . 2016 . American Psychiatric Press . 9781585624928.
  35. Kirmayer . L. J. . Narasiah . L. . Munoz . M. . Common mental health problems in immigrants and refugees: general approach in primary care . Canadian Medical Association Journal . 2011 . 183 . 12 . E959-67 . 10.1503/cmaj.090292 . 20603342 . 3168672 .
  36. Kirmayer . Laurence J. . Fung . Kenneth . Rousseau . Cécile . Lo . Hung Tat . Menzies . Peter . Guzder . Jaswant . Ganesan . Soma . Andermann . Lisa . MacKenzie . Kwame . Guidelines for training in cultural psychiatry . Canadian Journal of Psychiatry . 2022 . 66 . 2 . 195–246 . 10.1177/0706743720907505 . 32345034 . 7918872 . 141386932 .
  37. Kirmayer . Laurence J. . Sockalingam . Sanjeev . Fung . Kenneth Po-Lun . Fleisher . William P. . Adeponle . Ademola A. . Bhat . Venkat . Munshi . Alpna . Ganesan . Soma . International medical graduates in psychiatry: cultural issues in training and continuing professional development. . Canadian Journal of Psychiatry . 2018 . 63 . 4 . 258–280 . 10.1177/0706743717752913 . 29630854 . 5894917 .
  38. Kirmayer . Laurence J. . Crafa . Daina . What kind of science for psychiatry? . Frontiers in Human Neuroscience . 2014 . 8 . 435 . 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00435. 25071499 . 4092362 . free .
  39. Ramstead . Maxwell . Veissiere . Samuel . Kirmayer . Laurence J. . Cultural affordances: Scaffolding local worlds through shared intentionality and regimes of attention . Frontiers in Psychology . 2016 . 7 . 1090 . 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01090. 27507953 . 4960915 . free .
  40. Veissiere . Samuel P.L. . Constant . Axel . Ramstead . Maxwell J.D. . Friston . Karl J. . Kirmayer . Laurence J. . Thinking through other minds: A variational approach to cognition and culture . Behavioral and Brain Sciences . 2020 . 43 . e90 . e90 . 10.1017/S0140525X19001213. 31142395 . 169038428 .
  41. Kirmayer . Laurence J. . The body's insistence on meaning: Metaphor as presentation and representation in illness experience. . Medical Anthropology Quarterly . 1992 . 6 . 4 . 323–346 . 10.1525/maq.1992.6.4.02a00020.
  42. Kirmayer . Laurence J. . The cultural diversity of healing: meaning, metaphor and mechanism . British Medical Bulletin . 2004 . 69 . 1 . 33–48 . 10.1093/bmb/ldh006. 15226195 . free . 3621226 .
  43. Gómez-Carrillo . Ana . Paquin . Vincent . Dumas . Guillaume . Kirmayer . Laurence J. . Restoring the missing person to personalized medicine and precision psychiatry . Frontiers in Neuroscience . 2023 . 17 . 10.3389/fnins.2023.1041433. 36845417 . 9947537 . free .
  44. Gómez-Carrillo . Ana . Kirmayer . Laurence J. . A Cultural-Ecosocial Systems View for Psychiatry . Frontiers in Psychiatry . 2023 . 14 . 10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1031390. 37124258 . 10133725 . free .
  45. Web site: JGH News.
  46. Web site: WACP Conference Program 2018.
  47. Web site: History and governance – AMI-Quebec.
  48. Web site: IACCP 2016 Program.
  49. Web site: Royal Society of Canada Fellows 2015. 8 September 2015 .
  50. Web site: CAHS Fellows. 14 November 2013 .
  51. Web site: SSPC Awards.
  52. Web site: CPA Special Awards.
  53. Web site: Cultural Psychiatry 711. Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry.
  54. Web site: How I got interested in ethnopsychiatry. Les Possédés et leurs mondes.
  55. Web site: Transcultural psychiatry and consultations in Nunavik. Les Possédés et leurs mondes.
  56. Web site: Medical and psychological anthropology in Montreal. Les Possédés et leurs mondes.
  57. Web site: Bodily expressions of distress. Les Possédés et leurs mondes.
  58. Web site: Indigenous mental health, cultural concepts of personhood and resilience. Les Possédés et leurs mondes.

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