Ethnographic Methods, Cultural Context, and Mental Illness: Bridging Different Ways of Knowing and Experience

Abstract

A self‐perpetuating cycle of mutual noninteraction among anthropologists, program representatives, and scientific peer reviewers has led to the near absence of ethnography in the NIMH research portfolio. The ensuing inattention to the context and meaning of findings emanatingfrom work supported by this agency has had enormous, but seldom appreciated, consequences. This commentary illustrates lessons learned in the course of integrating ethnographic, diagnostic, and epidemiologic techniques to study mental health problems among American Indians and Alaska Natives. These lessons demonstrate the benefits to be gained by building bridges across different ways of knowing, in terms of disciplines as well as cultures.