Afflictions: Culture & Mental Illness in Indonesia

Afflictions: Culture and Mental Illness in Indonesia is a six-part ethnographic documentary film series on the lives of the mentally ill living on the islands of Bali and Java in Indonesia. Each film documents the personal journey of a patient's diagnosis, care and treatment and the impact of culture, family, and community on the course of their illness. The films were directed and produced by ethnographic filmmaker and psychological anthropologist Robert Lemelson.

The films are based on Lemelson's ethnographic research from 1997 to 2010 on the relationship of psychiatric and neuropsychiatric disorders to culture. It is the first film series on mental illness in the developing world. Some emerging themes include: attitudes of family members, the power of culture in mental health outcomes, the merits of pharmaceutical treatment, and the importance of cultural context in understanding the experiences of the mentally ill.

Book
Afflictions: Steps Toward a Visual Psychological Anthropology discusses and complements the work presented in Afflictions: Culture and Mental Illness in Indonesia in order to explore issues in the cross-cultural study of mental illness and advocate for the role film can play both in the discipline and in participants’ lives. It integrates psychological and medical anthropology with the methodologies of visual anthropology, specifically ethnographic film.