This module, eleven weeks long in a 3-hour weekly seminar format, will introduce students to specific literature detailing the cultural basis of western psychology & psychiatry. This will include consideration of historical & contemporary, theoretical and applied, issues. The class will understand principles underpinning the ‘new cross-cultural psychiatry’, and consideration of concepts such as relativism and universality of mental disorders across cultures, cultural validity, category errors, culture bound syndromes, and the consequences of applying a minority Euro-American psychiatry to the majority world. Based on literature from anthropology, sociology, linguistics, and health policy; students will gain knowledge on how mental health and illness are constructed and enacted in different societies, with a particular focus on South Asia. Students will learn how to unpack presumed universal mental categories such as emotion and cognition. Phenomena such as psychologisation, somatisation, possession, stigma, and insight will be examined in-depth. Through illustrative case studies and clinical vignettes, the course will critically examine and attempt to reformulate received theories in the field of adult psychiatry, child & adolescent development, psychotherapy, policy and service delivery; in a cultural context. The course will also critique major national, cross-national, and cross-cultural research in the field; and address the challenge of developing innovative culturally valid methodologies that aim to capture local suffering and address outcomes of relevance to both clinicians and the communities concerned.