Florin Cristea is a PhD candidate whose work focuses on the influence of local moral worlds and orders of feeling on the illness experience of people diagnosed with a severe psychiatric disorder in Indonesia. At the intersection of Psychological and Medical Anthropology, he has conducted research in Romania, Tanzania, and Indonesia. His current project focuses on Balinese rural areas.

PhD Project

Extreme inequality and cultural and religious diversity mark illness experiences, narratives, and psychiatric care in Indonesia. Most mental health professionals concentrate in large urban areas (particularly in Jakarta, the capital city). Families and kin cover most costs involved for hospitalization and treatment of someone diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder. These structural developments affected in 2013 around 400,000 people that suffered from diagnosed severe mental afflictions, and that relied heavily on their families for their support. The psychiatric care profile of the island of Bali confirms these dynamics as many people remain outside of the health system and do not receive continuous care. Apart from structural challenges, social and cultural ways of perceiving mental health and illness shape individual and collective experiences of affliction. This project focuses on how global flows of psychiatric knowledge influence local perceptions and experiences of people diagnosed with a severe psychiatric disorder and their families. In addition, this study aims at understanding illness experiences at the intersection of moral, cognitive, and emotional processes and how these relate to global flows of psychiatric knowledge production.