Cultural psychiatry His cover article, "The Foundation of Cultural Psychiatry", in the
American Journal of Psychiatry (1978) presented a framework for a new discipline merging cultural anthropology with clinical psychiatry. Cultural psychiatry is an approach that synthesizes the biological, psychological, and social forces that impinge upon behavior, and explains their interactions through a cultural lens to therapeutically benefit individuals or groups affected by death, disease, and disorganization. Upon the death of his former teacher,
Margaret Mead, he took her place as the author of the chapter on
Psychiatry and
Anthropology in the third edition of
The Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry (1980). He has written updated chapters for editions in 1985 and 2005. He was elected the American representative on the executive board of the Transcultural Psychiatry Section of the
World Psychiatric Association for nine years. He is on the editorial board of the World Association of Cultural Psychiatry Research Review.
Deliberate self-harm His 1987 book,
Bodies Under Siege: Self-mutilation in Culture and Psychiatry, a psychiatric book on the topic of self-harm, according to
Jennifer Egan in
The New York Times, was "the first to comprehensively explore self-mutilation". The second edition (1996), subtitled
Self-Mutilation and Body Modification in Culture and Psychiatry, has been called the "seminal book on NSSI" (nonsuicidal self-injury). He describes deliberate self-injury as a morbid form of self-help, temporarily alleviating distressing symptoms, and, attempting to heal themselves, to attain some measure of spirituality, and to establish a sense of personal order. He helped to teach clinicians that self-injurious behavior totally differs from suicidal behavior. However, repetitive skin-cutters may develop a Deliberate Self-Harm syndrome which includes demoralization and a tendency to overdose. The “secret shame” website contains a supervised
Bodies Under Siege bulletin board that allows self-injurers to communicate with one another. Collaborators with Favazza on his publications in this area include Karen Conterio, Daphne Simeon, and Richard Rosenthal.
Religion His book
PsychoBible|PsychoBible: Behavior, Religion, and the Holy Book was published in 2004. After an overview of the Bible's contents as well as the process that leads to the Bible's creation, the book includes chapters on God, the devil, sin, women, alcohol, animals, the human body, spirituality, and healing. Favazza presents data on the Bible, on how Christians and Jews over the centuries have interpreted these data, and how psychiatry regards them. The book points to Biblical material that has been validated by scholars as well as material that requires faith. ==Books==