Indigenous ethnopsychiatry in the north-west of England: the case of 'Barrow Man'

This paper describes the appearance and subsequent disappearance of 'Barrow Man' and uses anthropological and social psychological theory to examine the socio-cultural, psychological and economic conditions for the existence of the phenomenon. It argues that these conditions were the result of both specific local labour market circumstances and of the effects of global political changes, and argues that to talk about 'Barrow Man' as if it was a psychiatric diagnosis was to identify a moral construct as a mental disorder. It also argues that at the same time the phenomenon was expressive of certain core values that were not readily acknowledged in everyday clinical practice and that it might therefore best be understood as an institutional category.