Health Care Degrees Online

Do our categories of behaviour - normal and abnormal - translate across cultures? Why do ethnic minorities have different experiences of mental health? Is there a ‘human nature’ underneath all the cultural differences? This new MSc - the first of its kind in Britain - aims to give candidates a solid grounding in key topics in psychological and psychiatric anthropology. The programme offers a broad-based anthropological approach, with options on learning and cognition, the body, childhood and psychoanalysis as well as intensive training in ethnographic research methods. In tackling these and other issues anthropologically, participants will acquire comparative knowledge, practical, analytical and research skills, and a reflective understanding of their own cultural and professional practices.

Social anthropology at Brunel is one of the more outward-looking and cosmopolitan social sciences, its subject being the documentation and explanation of cultural diversity. It is particularly suited to students who are curious about their own and other societies and who are interested in understanding social processes and meanings in the world around them.

Medical anthropology can be described as the study of cultural beliefs and behaviours associated with the origin, recognition and management of health and illness in different social and cultural groups. Medical anthropology is not simply concerned with practices of healing or systems of diagnosis and treatment such as biomedicine. It deals with the more informal systems of healthcare that exist worldwide (such as self-treatment, folk healers, shamans, and alternative practitioners), as well as those associated with professional Western science-based medicine and caring practices. Additionally, medical anthropology is also concerned with issues which relate to different cultural views of the ’self’ in health and disease, as well as shared beliefs, images and practices associated with perceptions of the human body and mind.