The central objective of the research is to describe, understand and explain the relationship between the mental illness of schizophrenia and other psychoses and the kinship system in the town of San Felipe Usila, a Chinantec community located in the north of the state of Oaxaca. Mexico.
When a man or woman is mentally ill with schizophrenia or another psychosis, he becomes a dependent person temporarily, if his psychotic disorder is transitory, or permanently, if his illness is chronic in nature. His biological, social and personal needs, as well as the needs of his mental illness, cannot be met by himself, but requires the help of one or more family caregivers. Then, as in other social groups, among the Chinantecs of San Felipe Usila, the domestic group is established as the social unit that assumes the responsibility and work of caring for its sick family member, whether for a limited period of time or, As in almost all cases, during the life of the patient until his death.
Sick women and men live in a stressful and hostile reality due to visions, voices, delusions, tactile perceptions: people speak badly about them and want to hurt them, they are convinced that there are people or beings who harm them. They monitor them, harass them, threaten them, want to kill them and their children, that their spouse is cheating on them with another woman, etc. The thinking, emotionality and behavior of sick people, therefore, is dominated by delusional ideas, distrust, sadness, fear, excessive jealousy, irritability, conflict, verbal and physical aggression towards family members and neighbors, talking to themselves, insomnia, motor agitation, leaving and returning home frequently, wandering the streets, etc. Even though these symptoms are controlled to a greater or lesser extent through psychotropic drugs, patients present deficits in their cognitive faculties, their executive functions and their social cognition that disable them in the performance of domestic and productive work to varying degrees depending on the case. .
The impact of mental illness on the lives of Usilean families is broad and profound, promoting a reorganization of the kinship system, articulated around the family, in order to manage its incidents in the areas of the marriage relationship, productive work , social programs implemented by the federal government, domestic work, raising children and religiosity. But the management of this incidence also requires, seeking the well-being of the patient and their family members, daily deployment of a set of care actions aimed at controlling the symptoms of mental illness and satisfying the biological, social and personal needs of the sick person. The incidence of mental illness in family life and its management and care of patients constitute, then, the axes of the articulation between the mental illness of schizophrenia and other psychoses and the Usilean kinship system.
| Date of Award | 25 Jan 2024 |
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| Original language | Spanish |
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| Supervisor | Aurora Gonzalez Echevarria (Director) |
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