Dominique Behague

I have long-term fieldwork experience in Southern Brazil, where I have been centrally concerned with investigating emerging forms of medicalisation within the context of health care reform and the governance of health and economic inequities. Whilst working in various schools of medicine and public health over the past decade, I developed an interest in studying the rise of global health advocacy coalitions, looking specifically at how scientific evidence is used for political and financial negotiations. In 2009, I completed a MSc in Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in an effort to support my engagement with interdisciplinary research and as a complement to my interest in the anthropology of public health science.

I am currently engaged in two areas of research, both of which relate to the anthropology of medicine, science and public health. The first, funded by The Wellcome Trust, is a direct outgrowth of my long-term research experience in Brazil and is a collaborative project with the Department of Social Medicine at the Federal University of Pelotas and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. This project explores the medicalisation of “adolescence” within the context of health care reform and the psychiatric de-institutionalization movement in Pelotas, Southern Brazil.

To explore how the psychiatric medicalisation of adolescence has affected young people themselves, this study followed the lives of a core group of 90 young people, participants of an ongoing 1982 epidemiological birth cohort study run by the Department of Social Medicine at the Federal University of Pelotas, from the time these youth were 15 years of age up until their 25th birthday (1997-2007). I am currently completing a book based on this material entitled The Shaping of Adolescent Psychopathology in the Wake of Brazil’s New Democracy.

My second area of research, funded by The Economic and Research Council (with K Storeng) and the Department for International Development (as part of the joint UCL/LSHTM 4+5 Research Consortium), uses the maternal health subfield as a case-study to investigate how the production and use of evidence within public health is being shaped by the politics of global health and evolving mechanisms of institutional accountability. I am currently developing a new related proposal focusing on the recent rise of the global mental health movement

Convenor:
Medical Anthropology in Clinical and Community Settings
Anthropology of Biomedicine and Psychiatry

Contribute to:
Themes in Psychological and Psychiatric Anthropology
Dimensions of Ethnography

Student Support:
Work Placement Convenor

Research Interests

Medical Anthropology, Medicalisation of the life-span, Psychiatry, Mental health, Adolescence, Anthropology of Biomedicine and Statistical sciences, Evidence-based Policy-making, Global Health, Inequities and class conflict, Brazil.

PhD Supervision

I have supervised doctoral students researching the evidence-based movement, global health organisation and political structures, and youth violence and mental health in Brazil. I welcome students with an interest in medical anthropology or the anthropology of psychiatry and the biomedical sciences.

Publications

Journal Papers

(2012) Behague, DP., Gonçalves, HD., Gigante, D. and Kirkwood, BR., Taming troubled teens: the social production of mental morbidity amongst young mothers in Pelotas, Brazil, Social Science and Medicine 74 (3) : 434- 443 Download publication

(2011) Goncalves, H., Souza, AD., Tavares, PA., Cruz, SH. and Behague, DP., Contraceptive medicalisation, fear of infertility and teenage pregnancy in Brazil, Culture, Health & Sexuality 13 (2) : 201- 215

(2010) Fottrell, E., Kanhonou, L., Goufodji, S., Béhague, D., Marshall, T., Patel, V. and Filippi, V., Risk of psychological distress following severe obstetric complications in Benin: The role of economics, physical health and spousal abuse, British Journal of Psychiatry 196 (1) : 18- 25

(2009) Behague, D., Psychiatry and Politics in Pelotas, Brazil: The equivocal quality of conduct disorder and related diagnoses, Medical Anthropology Quarterly 23 (4) : 455- 482

(2009) Behague, D., Tawiah, C., Rosato, M., Somed, T. and Morrison, J., Evidence-based policy-making: The implications of globally-applicable research for context-specific problem-solving in developing countries, Social Science & Medicine 69 (10) : 1539- 1546

(2008) Behague, D. and Storeng, KT., Béhague and Storeng Respond - Collapsing the vertical–horizontal divide: An ethnographic study of evidence-based policymaking in maternal health, American Journal of Public Health 98 (11) : 1930- 1931

(2008) Behague, DP., Gonçalves, H. and Victora, CG., Anthropology and Epidemiology: Learning epistemological lessons through a collaborative venture, Ciência & Saúde Coletiva 13 (6) : 1715- 1717

(2008) Behague, D., Gonçalves, H. and Victora, CG., Authors' responses to Anthropology and Epidemiology: learning epistemological lessons through a collaborative venture, Ciência & Saúde Coletiva 13 (6) : 1711- 1714

(2008) Behague, D., Pierre Bourdieu and transformative agency: a study of how patients in Benin negotiate blame and accountability in the context of severe obstetric events, Sociology of Health & Illness 30 (4) : 489- 510

(2008) Behague, DP. and Storeng, KT., Collapsing the vertical–horizontal divide: An ethnographic study of evidence-based policymaking in maternal health, American Journal of Public Health 98 (4) : 644- 649

(2008) Behague, DP., The domains of psychiatric practice: From centre to periphery, Culture Medicine and Psychiatry 32 (2) : 140- 151

(2008) Behague, DP., Psychiatry and military conscription in Brazil: The search for opportunity and institutionalized therapy, Culture Medicine and Psychiatry 32 (2) : 194- 218

(2002) Behague, DP., Beyond the simple economics of cesarean section birthing: Women's resistance to social inequality, Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 26 (4) : 473- 507

(2002) Behague, D., Gonçalves, H. and Da-Costa, JD., Making medicine for the poor: Primary health care interpretations in Pelotas, Brazil, Health Policy and Planning 17 (2) : 131- 143

(2002) Behague, DP., Victora, CG. and Barros, FC., Consumer demand for caesarean sections in Brazil: Informed decision making, patient choice, or social inequality? A population based birth cohort study linking ethnographic and epidemiological methods, British Medical Journal 324 (942)

Book Chapters

(2009) Behague, D., The dilemmas of politically sensitive medicalized approaches to reducing youth violence in Pelotas, Brazil. In: Jones, GA. and Rodgers, D. eds. Youth violence in Latin America: Gangs and juvenile justice in perspective. New York, USA : Palgrave MacMillan 133- 148