Ethnoepidemiology and mental health: insights from Latin America

Abstract

In this essay, I explore methodological as well as theoretical implications of an ethno-epidemiological approach, aiming to integrate research findings in mental health into new conceptual models. With this objective, I first evaluate the roots and uses of the term “ethnoepidemiology” to designate three research strategies for scientific knowledge production: type I (studies of sociocultural risk factors and ethnically defined risk groups); type II (studies of lay models of distribution and occurrence of illness in populations); type III (ethnographic studies of projects and areas of epidemiologic research). As an illustration, selected methodological features of three studies in which I have participated are presented and discussed. I then elaborate upon methodological developments derived from this experience of doing research, generating new models for transcultural transdisciplinary research of mental health practices. Lastly, I comment on some broad implications of studying mental health problems from an integrated ethnographical and epidemiological point of view, in diverse and deeply unequal societies such as those of contemporary Latin America.

Urbanization and mental health as a research problem in Latin America (with a focus on Brazil)

“…This brief review of studies on social determinants of mental health in Brazil, considering research findings by historical context, demonstrates that urbanization-modernization-migration was more present in the literature in the decades of 1980 and 1990, whereas social inequity variables (gender, ethnicity race/skin color and racism) came to be dominant in the two past decades. Ethnoepidemiologic approaches [32 ▪ ] may be useful for understanding the role of urbanization and urbanicity in the complex determination of mental health in contemporary societies, using ethnographic research strategies to study the mode of life of urban population groups [33].…”

Socioeconomic consequences of the COVID‐19 pandemic for people who use drugs

“…To recruit participants into the qualitative study, we used an ethno-epidemiological ("ethnoepi") technique that allowed the complimentary use of sampling methods typically used in quantitative research. Ethno-epi approaches have been described as an emergent crossdisciplinary research methodology that combines the strengths of ethnographic and other qualitative methods for understanding social meanings and contexts with the design, sampling, data collection and analytical strategies developed in epidemiology (Almeida Filho, 2020;Mayock et al, 2015). The technique we used was based on pandemic-related questions added to SuperMIX and VMAX questionnaires in March 2020 (Rathnayake et al, 2023).…”