Date: March 2015
Faculty Organizer: Clark Chilson, Religious Studies
Examining Stress and Mental Health Care in Japan was the first of a series of collaborative research projects bringing together scholars from the social sciences and the health sciences at the University of Pittsburgh to promote greater understanding of the relationship between culture and mental health. Over one hundred years ago, Emil Kraepelin introduced the revolutionary discipline of comparative psychiatry, focusing on ethnic and cultural aspects of mental health and illness. Since then, a great body of scholarly research has reaffirmed the intricate relationship between culture and mental health. The project drew from an internationally recognized faculty committed to exploring the cultural aspects of stress and mental health in Japan, and resulted in a two-day symposium to examine Japan’s response to stress and mental health issues in a manner that captured the attention of the academic and medical communities in Pittsburgh. The symposium featured a number of faculty-led panels, working groups, films and exhibits designed for faculty, students, practitioners, and the general public. Scholars from Japan, the U.K., Canada, and the U.S. came together to address cultural aspects and response to stress and mental illness as a global issue, and examined Japan’s response by bringing into the analysis the American experience and response issues of mental health. The symposium sought to inform the audience about a devastating global issue while learning from Japanese and American experiences with stress and mental health.
Funded by the Toshiba International Foundation