This panel grows out of two decades of collaboration between researchers from Harvard Medical School and Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, focusing on first episode psychotic illness. Studies range from epidemiological research on the incidence and nature of onset of first episode/first contact psychoses; intensive ethnographic studies of individual cases followed over time, family responses and care for illness, and interaction with traditional healers; clinical studies, linking cultural phenomenology with clinical rating scales, and intervention studies focused on developing, evaluating, then scaling up psycho-educational interventions for families caring for a person with psychotic illness. Rather than addressing individual studies, this panel will provide a brief overview of the context and history of this program of research, followed by four presentations examining specific issues, drawing from the larger body of research: 1) the social and cultural influences on onset and long-term outcomes of illness, with a particular focus comparing very rapid and slow onset psychoses; 2) cultural phenomenology and care-seeking, providing both case studies and quantitative data; 3) the social course of illness, based on intensive longitudinal studies; and 4) evaluation of psycho-educational interventions for families of persons with psychotic illness, designed for the local social and cultural setting, and preliminary efforts to scale up such interventions through the primary health care system. The panel thus links studies of cultural phenomenology and psychosocial interventions of first episode psychosis. Though not generalizable to all of Indonesia, this research provides important data from Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous nation.
