Anthropology and psychiatry

In this paper anthropology and psychiatry are defined as well as their scientific area, their methods and research objectives; the high level of their mutual thematic and methodological complementarity has been emphasized. The sociocultural factors which are inherent in the area of cultural anthropology can affect mental health in a number of ways: by forming a certain personality type that is predisposed for a certain type of disorder, by an education model which increases the frequency of some disorders, by criticism and sanctions of a certain behaviour that is actually desirable from the point of view of mental health preservation, by supporting and rewarding a behaviour model that is harmful for mental health; by its complexity and, in some of the segments, by mutual contradictions they can cause mental disorders; by forming symptoms of mental disorders i.e. by a pathoplastic action through which they become an area of scientific interest of cultural psychiatry. Anthropology directs psychiatry towards creating preventive and therapeutic programs that accept the mutual influence and interconnectedness of socio-cultural conditions and the mental health status.