Ellen Corin | McGill University (original) (raw)

Papers by Ellen Corin

Africa, 1975

Une des caractéristiques fondamentales de la vaste remise en cause que connaissent les valeurs de... more Une des caractéristiques fondamentales de la vaste remise en cause que connaissent les valeurs de la culture occidentale est sans contredit le fait qu'elle a dépassé une réflexion sur elle-même et qu'elle va puiser ses éléments de renouvellement dans les autres cultures. C'est dans ce cadre que la médecine occidentale, confrontée à d'autres traditions médicales, s'interroge sur ses postulats fondamentaux et sur leur valeur universelle. Cette interrogation est particulièrement aigüe dans le domaine de la psychiatrie: contestée violemment par ceux-là même qui la pratiquent, elle est à la recherche de nouvelles coordonnées et de nouveaux modes de thérapie qui lui donnent prise sur un objet qu'elle a de plus en plus de peine à définir. Au sein de ces tâtonnements naissent une série de tentatives nouvelles de traitement dont certains pensent trouver un correspondant dans d'autres formes de psychiatrie, déjà enracinées dans toute une tradition. Ainsi, différent...

Psychopathologie Africaine, 1993

Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 1988

Transcultural Psychiatry, 1997

The specificity of the French contribution to ethnopsychiatry lies in its strong clinical focus a... more The specificity of the French contribution to ethnopsychiatry lies in its strong clinical focus and its psychoanalytic inspiration. Nathan's work is approached from the point of view of its evolution from a perspective centred on the exploration of frontiers between culture and psyche, and African traditional and Western psychoanalytic therapeutic theories, toward an emphasis on the role of logical constraints and traumatism within the therapeutic process. Nathan's evolving position towards psychoanalysis is also explored. Having underscored the importance of Nathan's work, the author discusses potential problems entailed by his illocutionary position within the clinical setting and by his explicit goal to reanchor immigrants within their traditional culture.

Santé mentale au Québec, 2002

Résumé L'auteure s'interroge sur la signification de la notion de « rétablissement » du p... more Résumé L'auteure s'interroge sur la signification de la notion de « rétablissement » du point de vue de personnes qui ont vécu une crise psychotique. Les résultats de deux recherches sont brièvement revus sous cet angle : l'une sur la « réintégration sociale » du point de vue des discours et des pratiques des personnes utilisatrices ; l'autre sur la place et la signification des ressources alternatives en santé mentale dans l'histoire de vie et la trajectoire de souffrance de ces personnes. Les récits font ressortir que, plus qu'un retour à une situation d'avant, le rétablissement s'organise selon plusieurs axes qui s'entrecroisent : trouver des mots pour dire l'expérience, apprivoiser le quotidien, retrouver un contrôle sur sa vie, rouvrir un mouvement perçu comme bloqué, pouvoir dire et faire reconnaître le caractère exceptionnel de l'expérience. Le rétablissement implique à la fois la possibilité d'élaborer un espace intérieur signi...

International Review of Psychiatry, 2005

Transcultural studies suggest a possible influence of culture on the course and outcome of schizo... more Transcultural studies suggest a possible influence of culture on the course and outcome of schizophrenia. However, the notion of culture remains ill-defined in these studies; most often, hypotheses regarding protective factors seem to derive more from stereotyped visions of cultural differences than be empirically based. Explorative studies conducted in south India consider subjective experience as a key mediating variable between culture and course and outcome in schizophrenia. They explore patients and relatives experience and its evolution and aim at identifying the explicit and implicit references to culture throughout the narratives. Ethnographically oriented data collected through an open-ended Turning Point/Period Interview systematically reconstructs the perceived evolution of signs, coping, explanations, reactions and help-seeking from different perspectives. This paper examines the degree of convergence and divergence between narratives collected from a small sample of female schizophrenic patients and one of their relatives. A high degree of convergence at the level of symptoms and differences in their narrative construction are observed.

Transcultural psychiatry, 2006

As a mark of gratitude to Alexander Leighton, this article engages him in a dialogue, reopening s... more As a mark of gratitude to Alexander Leighton, this article engages him in a dialogue, reopening several debates that were enriched by his research and reflections on ethics, the ‘aesthetic dimension’ of the research enterprise, the processes that mediate between collective and individual variables, and his strong distrust of theory. The authors discuss some of the features of Leighton's perspective that they have retained and transformed in their own work on community responses to chronic mental illness in rural Quèbec, on the course of schizophrenia in India, and on culture and psychosis in clinical settings in Montrèal. The challenge remains the one that Leighton identified: how can findings derived from different disciplines be made to co-ordinate? The authors argue that this question must be answered from within the centre of each discipline rather than from their frontiers or zones of interface.

BMC Health Services Research, 2009

The recovery process is characterized by the interaction of a set of individual, environmental an... more The recovery process is characterized by the interaction of a set of individual, environmental and organizational conditions common to different people suffering with a mental health problem. The fact that most of the studies have been working with schizophrenic patients we cannot extend what has been learned about the process of recovery to other types of mental problem. In the meantime, the prevalence of anxiety, affective and borderline personality disorders continues to increase, imposing a significant socioeconomic burden on the Canadian healthcare system and on the patients, their family and significant other . The aim of this study is to put forward a theoretical model of the recovery process for people with mental health problem schizophrenic, affective, anxiety and borderline personality disorders, family members and a significant care provider.

Insight and Psychosis, Jan 8, 1998

CASE Martin was a 30-year-old unmarried, unemployed man who presented to the emergency room with ... more CASE Martin was a 30-year-old unmarried, unemployed man who presented to the emergency room with the certain knowledge that he was to be admitted to the psychiatric ward to be executed for crimes he did not commit. When asked how he came to this conviction, he reported that he had noticed a license plate on a passing car that read" K2DR" and immediately knew that this was a reference to the" K-2 Diaries," documents that had been forged by the FBI or some other malevolent agency to frame him for murder and, ...

Ottawa, Canadian Institutes of Health Research/Instituts canadiens de recherche en santΘ, SSHRC Strategic Themes, The Canadian Health Services Research Foundation, 1999

• Suffering, distress and pain experienced by persons, families and groups today, are largely lin... more • Suffering, distress and pain experienced by persons, families and groups today, are largely linked to the conditions of life associated with modernity.