Faith, Culture, and Coercion: An Interview with Cultural Psychiatrist G. Eric Jarvis

Eric Jarvis is a Professor of Psychiatry at McGill University whose work brings attention to areas often overlooked in mainstream psychiatry, including religion, coercion, the social determinants of psychosis, and culture. He directs the Cultural Consultation Service, the First Episode Psychosis Program, and the Culture and Psychosis Working Group at the Jewish General Hospital, and is Editor-in-Chief of Transcultural Psychiatry. His research looks closely at how religious belief, spiritual practice, moral worlds, language, migration, racism, and social context shape how people experience distress, meaning, and healing. In this conversation, we explore how faith, culture, and power shape mental health practice. We discuss Jarvis's work on religion and spirituality in cultural psychiatry, his research on culture and the social causes of psychosis, and his studies of coercion in first-episode psychosis. We also talk about category fallacies, looping effects, and what happens when biomedical explanations of suffering collide with spiritual, familial, and community-based understandings of distress. *** Thank you for being with us to listen to the podcast and read our articles this year. MIA is funded entirely by reader donations. If you value MIA, please help us continue to survive and grow. https://www.madinamerica.com/donate/ To find the Mad in America podcast on your preferred podcast player, click here: https://pod.link/1212789850 © Mad in America 2026. Produced by James Moore https://www.jmaudio.org