Contact
Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry
McGill University
1033 Pine Avenue West
Montreal, Quebec H3A 1A1
Tel: (514) 398-7302
Fax: (514) 398-4370
Email
Areas of Expertise
Psychiatric practice in multicultural societies; aboriginal mental health;
anthropology of mental illness and healing; mental health care for immigrants
and refugees; cultural idioms of distress; somatization, dissociation and
psychosis; trauma and resilience.
Profile
Laurence J. Kirmayer, MD, FRCPC, is James McGill Professor and Director,
Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry,
McGill University. He is Editor-in-Chief of Transcultural Psychiatry, a
quarterly scientific journal published by Sage (UK) and directs the Culture and
Mental Health Research Unit at the Department of Psychiatry, Sir Mortimer B.
Davis Jewish General Hospital in Montreal where he conducts research on mental
health services for immigrants and refugees, psychiatry in primary care, the
mental health of Canadian Aboriginal peoples, and the anthropology of
psychiatry.
He holds a CIHR Senior Investigator Award for a research program entitled The
integration of culture in psychiatric theory and practice, which includes
studies on the relevance of the cultural formulation in psychiatric
consultation and a cross-national comparative study of models of mental health
care for multicultural societies.
His past research includes funded studies on the development and evaluation of
a cultural consultation service in mental health, pathways and barriers to
mental health care for immigrants, somatization in primary care, cultural
concepts of mental health and illness in Inuit communities, risk and protective
factors for suicide among Inuit youth in Nunavik (Northern Québec), and the
role of metaphor in psychiatric theory and practice.
Dr Kirmayer founded and directs the annual Summer Program in Social and
Cultural Psychiatry at McGill. He is also founder and Co-Director of the
National Network for Aboriginal Mental Health Research funded by the Canadian
Institutes for Health Research. He co-edited the volumes, Current Concepts of
Somatization (American Psychiatric Press, 1991), Understanding Trauma:
Integrating Biological, Clinical and Cultural Perspectives (Cambridge
University Press, 2007), andHealing Traditions: The Mental Health of Aboriginal
Peoples in Canada (University of British Columbia Press). For further
information see the description of the Culture and Mental Health Research Unit
of the Jewish General Hospital.
Selected
Publications