Stefan Ecks
University of Edinburgh

Friday, March 10, 2006
3-5 pm, 2224 Piedmont Street, Room 15

This paper develops an anthropological perspective on the uses of "evidence" by psychiatrists and general physicians treating depression in Kolkata (Calcutta, India). According to the World Health Organization, there is strong evidence for a large "treatment gap" between developed and less-developed countries in regards to mental health. The assumption is that, in countries like India, depression remains mostly undiagnosed and untreated. This supposed treatment gap seems particularly serious in light of another statistic, which claims that depression will be the world's second most prevalent health problem by 2020. Based on recent fieldwork in Kolkata, this paper shows how the uses of epidemiological evidence by different practitioners are highly strategic, and that some of the crucial pieces of evidence for a "rise of depression" are produced by the doctors' own prescription patterns. Yet this making of evidence by doctors must be asked in conjunction with an equally troubling question: what kinds of "evidence" do medical anthropologists produce?

2224 Piedmont is on the east side of campus, between International House and the Haas Business school and across the street from the Stadium. Room 15 is on your right as you walk in.