Armando Favazza

Who is Armando Favazza?

Armando Favazza is an American author and psychiatrist best known for his studies of cultural psychiatry, deliberate self-harm, and religion. Favazza's Bodies Under Siege: Self-mutilation in Culture and Psychiatry was the first psychiatric book on this topic. His 2004 work, PsychoBible: Behavior, Religion, and the Holy Book presents objective data regarding commonly held misconceptions about the Bible as a whole as well as its major passages. In Kaplan and Sadock's Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry he has written the chapter on "Anthropology and Psychiatry" in the 3rd edition, the 4th edition and the 8th edition, as well as the chapter on "Spirituality and Psychiatry" in the 9th edition. He has published two cover articles in the American Journal of Psychiatry: "Foundations of Cultural Psychiatry" [135:293-303,1978] and "Modern Christian Healing of Mental Illness" [139:728-735,1982]. In 1979 he co-founded The Society for the Study of Culture and Psychiatry.