Psychiatric Anthropology, Sensory Screening, and the Political Economy of Diagnosis

Despite decades of neuroscientific research, no reliable biological or sensory mark-ers exist for diagnosing schizophrenia or related psychotic syndromes in the absenceof clinically manifest symptoms. Nevertheless, contemporary psychiatric discoursecontinues to promote early detection, sensory screening, and risk-based models ofpsychosis, often framed as preventive strategies. From the perspective of psychiatricanthropology, this article argues that such approaches risk conflating social vulnerabil-ity with biological pathology. Drawing on anthropological theory, critical psychiatry,and research on social suffering, the paper examines how diagnostic practices are un-evenly distributed along lines of race, gender, class, and sexuality. It contends thatmarginalized populations are disproportionately subjected to psychiatric labeling de-spite the absence of demonstrable organic pathology, while structurally sanctionedforms of harm enacted from positions of power remain largely unpathologized. Thearticle calls for a situated, phenomenologically grounded psychiatric anthropology ca-pable of distinguishing biological dysfunction from the socio-political production ofdistress.