Cross Cultural Issues and Mental Health in Conflict and Disaster Settings
Lynne Jones, OBE, FRCPsych, PhD
March 12, 2019
In this seminar I will describe and discuss some of the cross-cultural issues that arise in humanitarian settings. These include:
- discussing the role of a western mental health practitioner in a non-Western setting;
- the appropriateness of diagnostic categories such as PTSD;
- how to conduct valid and ethical assessments;
- the value of collaboration with 鈥榯raditional鈥� healers;
- how working in such settings has affected my own clinical practice at home.
About the speaker
Dr. Lynne Jones is a child and adolescent psychiatrist, writer, researchers, and relief worker. Jones has been engaged in assessing mental health needs and establishing and running mental health services in disaster, conflict, and post-conflict settings since 1990 around the world. Outside the Asylum: A Memoir of War, Disaster and Humanitarian Psychiatry, her latest book, published by Wiedenfeld and Nicolson (US publication June 2018), explores her experience as a practicing psychiatrist in war and disaster zones for 25 years, along with the changing world of international relief. With her colleague in international development, Luke Pye, Jones has co-created Migrant Child Storytelling, a website where migrant children can tell their stories though their own drawings, videos, and writing.
Until August of 2011, she was the senior technical advisor in mental health for International Medical Corps. She is a course director for the programme on Mental Health in Complex Emergencies at the International Institute for Humanitarian Affairs, Fordham University, and consults to the World Health Organization. She was a member of ICD 11 stress disorders working group, and is a technical consultant in the development of the mhGAP curriculums by WHO and UNHCR. In October 2013 the new edition of her book, Then They Started Shooting: Children of the Bosnian War and the Adults They Become, was published by Bellevue Literary Press. She has a PhD in social psychology and political scene; she has also been a Radcliffe Fellow, In 2001, she was made an Officer of the British Empire (OBE) for her mental health work in conflict-affected areas of Central Europe. She is an honorary consultant at the Maudsley hospital, London, and Cornwall Partnership NHS Foundation trust; and is a visiting scientist at the Fran莽ois-Xavier Bagnoud Centre for Health and Human Rights, Harvard University. She is currently living and working in Belize.
Irving Ludmer Building, Room 138
1033 Pine Ave West, Montreal, H3A 1A1
鈥淎n automatic bible in the brain鈥�: Trauma and prayer in post-conflict northern Uganda
Lars Hedegaard Williams, PhD candidate
Aarhus University, Denmark
December 13, 2018
The Acholi region of northern Uganda is recovering after generations of civil war. The military conflict stopped in 2006, but many people still suffer from repercussions of war e.g., diverse forms of mental illness and trauma. In search for resources to cope with these issues, many people in the rural areas turn to Pentecostal-Charismatic churches. Here it seems that many have found relief from their symptoms through community support and by learning a variety of prayer practices by which they 鈥榩ray against鈥� their symptoms. In the church community prayers are used to engage haunting spirits, to control emotions and cultivate feelings of forgiveness. I would like to discuss in what way these practices can be understood as symptom relieving in the way they shape subjectivity, cultivate certain emotions, and create narrative, and how this can help us understand and conceptualize local responses to trauma after war.
Irving Ludmer Building, Room 138
1033 Pine Ave West, Montreal, H3A 1A1
Global Mental Health & Cultural Psychiatry: Creative Tensions in the Discourse
Dr. Kamaldeep S Bhui
Queen Mary University of London
November 28, 2018
This seminar will explore the discourse and debates around global mental health and cultural psychiatry as related by contrasting approaches to research and practice with distinct the ambitions, successes and constraints. This topic has been subjected to critical interrogation by proponents of one of the other disciplines, as well as by commentators from other research and practice and policy perspectives. The seminar proposes that the historical and political contexts in which these disciplines emerged, in part shape the scope and vision, and gaze that the respective approaches offer. Research to tackle inequalities and injustice, an ambition of both these disciplines, is necessarily subjected to negotiations of power and disputes about purity of method and purpose, and risks of cooption to the structural forces that perpetuate inequalities and injustices. The disciplines might also be understood to not be so rigid and well defined, but constantly evolving and negotiating their role within psychiatry and mental health care, and more widely in health and political systems that attend to health and disease. A brief synopsis of some of the key points of creative tension will be presented, followed by open and critical discussion and Q&A. The aim is to arrive at a perspective pf position of some stability and maturity that acknowledges the place and value and unintended consequence of the many varieties of contemporary research, practice and policy.
Culture and Mental Health Research Unit, Room 218B
Institute of Community and Family Psychiatry
4333 Chemin de la C么te Ste-Catherine, Montreal
The Funnel Effect: The ethical unraveling of care under the power of the ban
Cristiana Giordano
University of California, Davis
October 18, 2018
Since the beginning of 2015, Italian newspapers, political and humanitarian actors, and state bureaucrats have often used the expression the 鈥渇unnel effect of immigration鈥� to describe the drastic increase in numbers of people arriving in Italy from Northern and sub-Saharan Africa, turning the peninsula into the main gateway to Europe. This expression also points to the contradictions at the heart of current European Union decisions on how to manage the increase numbers of incoming foreigners, and the frontline role played by the Italian government and civil society to manage the co called 鈥渞efugee crisis鈥� in the Mediterranean.
In this paper, I reflect upon the disembarkation procedures that people rescued at sea go through when they arrive at Italian ports. I approach the sbarco (disembarkation) at Sicilian ports as a complex and layered process of medical, bureaucratic, legal, and humanitarian screening and evaluation that involves numerous actors, institutions, and NGOs. This assemblage of techniques mirrors the fundamentally split ways in which power and sovereignty operate: on the one hand, it functions as a form of custody and control (of foreign bodies and borders), and, on the other, it rescues and cares for those who make it under its sovereignty by fitting its categories of inclusion. I simultaneously follow the practices of local artists who collect and attend to that which makes it to the shore of Italy otherwise, escaping the official sites of arrival, and entering in the form of traces. Many things cross borders with the humans, without making it under the scrutiny of the port. Shoes, belts, water bottles, photos, empty cans, hats, faded documents, and backpacks that once belonged to those who crossed are washed ashore and often collected by artists who reassemble them in public installations to provoke a different space of care and political life.
About the speaker
Cristiana Giordano is an associate professor of anthropology at UC Davis. She received her PhD in anthropology from the University of California, Berkely, and her MA in philosophy from the University of Pavia, Italy. She works on foreign migration, mental health, the body, and cultural translation in contemporary Italy.
Irving Ludmer Building, Room 138
1033 Pine Ave West, Montreal, H3A 1A1
Profiling mental disorders worldwide: a history of science approach
Harry Yi-Jui Wu, MD, DPhil
University of Hong Kong
August 30, 2018
This talk traces how mental disorders became comparable worldwide through the making of metrics. It focuses on WHO鈥檚 first international social psychiatry project, which was originated from the post-WWII ideology of world citizenship, shaped by a group of visionary individuals, expedited with the quest of technology, and then carried out in the institution. It argues that the ways of understanding mental disorders are contingent on the changing values, perceived nature of evidence, material foundation and collectively pursued scientific methods in the world we live in.
WHO鈥檚 social psychiatry project, launched in 1965, recruited experts worldwide, aiming to establish the universal profiles of mental disorders and create a common language for psychiatric diagnoses. It was during this period, psychiatric epidemiology matured as the useful tool to analyze data collected internationally By the end of the project, it successfully rewrote the fifth chapter of the ICD, 9th Revision.
But at the same time, voices also appeared to critique so-called golden standards, including the mushrooming discovery of culture-bound syndromes, disintegrated disease categories in countries which did not participate in WHO鈥檚 project, the appeal of new cross-cultural psychiatry, and the Global Mental Health initiative.
Through multi-site archival works, my project unpacks the black box of knowledge making by tracing the social, cultural and technological origins of the WHOS鈥� lavish attempt. The story provides a case analysis of how knowledge was shaped by the politics of an international organization, the role of experts therein, and a wider socio-cultural context. It also examines, the meaning and applicability of global standards of mental disorders in developing countries.
About the speaker
Harry Yi-Jui Wu is Assistant Professor in Medical Humanities at the Medical Ethics and Humanities Unit, Lik Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine. He received his medical degree at Chung Shan Medical University and DPhil in history from Oxford University. Before rejoining the University of Hong Kong, he had been teaching at Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine and the History Programme at Nanyang Technological University. Singapore. Harry鈥檚 research work includes the history of medicine and medical humanities.
Irving Ludmer Building, Room 138
1033 Pine Ave West, Montreal, H3A 1A1
Co-Constructing Knowledge in Global Mental Health
Dr. Laurence J. Kirmayer
91黑料网
June 7, 2018
Global mental health is concerned with understanding and addressing mental health problems in diverse settings around the globe. The Movement for Global Mental Health (GMH) is an evidence-based global initiative that aims to close the treatment gap for people with mental disorders in low-and middle-income countries.
However, there are persistent controversies related to how systems of knowledge and practice are generated and circulate to reshape local health systems, and how the goals, values, needs and aspirations or communities can be reflected in the reconfiguration of the local health care system. The objective of this webinar is to critically examine some of the organizational, political and conceptual implications of global knowledge production and circulation for the transformation of the local mental health systems, research, and training.
Dr. Kirmayer鈥檚 presentation will explore how to advance GMH agenda for community mental health by revisiting the persistent tensions in GMH, recognizing the role of culture in structural competence, and emphasizing the need for pluralism and safe spaces for collaborative knowledge production, critical rethinking and person-centered mental health care.
Panel Discussion (in Lima)
Critical Perspectives of Global Mental Health and Implications in Peru
- Dr. Alberto Perales. Psychiatrist, Principal Professor in Psychiatry and Ethics, Researcher, Institute of Ethics in Health, UNMSM
- Dra. Marina Piazza. Principal Professor of FASPA, Coordinator of Mental Health Unit, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia
- Dra. Gloria Cueva. Psychiatrist, General Director, Hermilio Valdiz谩n Hospital
About the speaker
James 91黑料网 Professor and Director, Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, 91黑料网 and Director of the 91黑料网 Global Mental Health Program
Director of the Culture & Mental Health Research Unit at the Institute of Community and Family Psychiatry, Jewish General Hospital in Montreal
Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences and the Royal Society of Canada
Leads a CIHR Pathways to Health Equity Suicide Prevention Implementation Research Team
Moving the Air: A Contemporary Tale of Chinese Drug Rehabilitation
Excerpts from Chasing the Dragon
Dr. Sandra T. Hyde, PhD, MPH
91黑料网
April 10, 2018
In rethinking mental health care in light of China鈥檚 massive internal migration, displacement and policies demanding hyper-urbanization, in this paper I explore the lived experiences of the residents of Sunlight therapeutic community (TC) for drug rehabilitation in Yunnan Province in the mid to late 2000s. My ethnography of Sunlight TC marks it as a clinical space that rises and falls within a particular set of institutions ad ideas that travel across the globe 鈥� behavior modification, AA/Narcotics Anonymous, Mind/Body treatments, Art Therapy, 鈥� what do these modalities say about how 鈥榓 complicated kindness鈥� travels across the globe? All of the therapeutic concepts that take root at Sunlight have traveled across global spaces both physical and metaphorical to reach Chinese psychiatrists, peer educators, and former addicts. Why is 鈥榤oving the air鈥� a useful rubric for understanding how therapies and addicts become part of global webs of therapies that cross borders bringing with them political ideologies of care? I end by problematizing the conditions and practices within Sunlight TC, where we find new post-millennial citizens that must read the air in the Xi Jinping era of politicized personal-development.
Irving Ludmer Building, Room 138
1033 Pine Ave West, Montreal, H3A 1A1
Global Mental health Conference
Hosted by Comparative Healthcare Systems Program (CHSP)
March 15, 2018
Thomson House Ballroom
91黑料网
The context and discourse of Ethnopsychiatry in British Africa
Eric Jarvis, MD & Dr. Allan Young, PhD
91黑料网
February 6, 2018
British colonial psychiatry became established in Africa in the early 20th Century. As asylums were built to house the most severely mentally ill, British doctors and psychiatrists managed the facilities and updated the authorities on needs and concerns. Ethnopsychiatry grew from the writings of these observers, but has been critiqued in recent decades as stereotyped, racist and harmful to Africans. In its time, however, Ethnopsychiatry was widely accepted and garnered considerable attention. Some of its proponents became well known experts on colonial peoples and were hired as consultants to governments and the World Health Organization. This paper will assess the context in which British Ethnopsychiatry flourished, present themes from representative texts, propose why Ethnopsychiatry suddenly disappeared in the late 1960s, and suggest how its discourse persists in modern psychiatry.
Irving Ludmer Building, Room 138
1033 Pine Ave West, Montreal, H3A 1A1
From the Enlightenment to Black Lives Matter: Racial and Gendered Transformation of Schizophrenia in Psychiatry
Dr. Ingrid Waldron
Dalhousie University
November 23, 2017
Psychiatry has been resistant to examine its role in affirming ideological representations of racialized individuals and in perpetuating racism. Psychiatry provided the 鈥渟cientific鈥� rationale for colonization because it developed during colonialism and slavery when myths about racism were being integrated into European culture. Therefore, the over-representation and mistreatment of Black people in secure psychiatric facilities in North America can be attributed to racist ideology that is inherent to the 鈥渉eritage鈥� of psychiatry. This presentation examines psychiatry as an imperial and colonizing force by exploring how 鈥渟cientific鈥� and normative medical knowledge and discourse are constituted within historically specific regimes of power. Using the racial and gendered transformation of schizophrenia as a 鈥淏lack disease鈥� that is disproportionately applied to Black men as its starting point, the paper will explore psychiatry鈥檚 gender, class, and madness, the 鈥渞acialization of psychiatric diagnoses鈥�, the misdiagnosis of Black people and, the non-delivery of appropriate treatments and delays in help-seeking among Black people. The paper concludes with an examination of how structural competency approaches can address the mental health impacts of structural violence in racialized communities.
Irving Ludmer Building, Room 138
1033 Pine Ave West, Montreal, H3A 1A1
Once upon a shrine: Traditional healing of the mind and soul in contemporary Ghana
Dr. Vivian Dzokoto
Virginia Commonwealth University
October 26, 2017
This talk is a reflection on observations and insights gleaned from fieldwork conducted in the summer of 2017 at shrines of traditional healers in rural Ghana. It explores:
- The role of the traditional healer as a health and mental health care provider in contemporary rural Ghana
- The explanatory model from which Ghanaian traditional healers operate
- The evolution of the roles of traditional healers vis-脿-vis the spread of charismatic Christianity in Ghana
- Continuities and discontinuities between western style therapeutic practices and Ghanaian traditional healing strategies
- The potential interface between traditional healers and WHO Mental Health Gap Action Programme (mhGAP) initiatives (aimed at scaling up services for mental, neurological and substance use disorders for countries especially with low- and middle-income)
Irving Ludmer Building, Room 138
1033 Pine Ave West, Montreal, H3A 1A1
Decolonization and Diagnosis in Nigeria: A Historical Appraisal of Transcultural Psychiatry in Nigeria
Dr. Matthew M. Heaton
Department of History, Virginia Tech
October 5, 2017
This talk examines the ways that psychiatric thinking in Nigeria about three specific diagnoses 鈥� schizophrenia, depression, and a culture bound syndrome called 鈥渂rain fag鈥� 鈥� changed significantly in the period from the 1950s-1970s. During this time, Nigerian psychiatrists like Thomas Adeoye Lambo became the first psychiatrists of indigenous background to work in the country at the same time that Nigeria was rapidly decolonizing. At the same time, the field of transcultural psychiatry was in tis early development in Europe and North America, and research partnerships between Nigeria and Western research center became crucial to the development of new psychiatric knowledge. 91黑料网鈥檚 own Raymond Prince was among the first transcultural psychiatrists to visit and research in Nigeria, and wrote the first scholarly treatment of 鈥渂rain fag syndrome鈥�. This research that took place in Nigeria was influenced by and critical of earlier colonial era discourses about the nature of mental illness in Africans that had been based in the racialist ideologies of empire at the same time that it was contributing to the process of developing a new, moder nation-state with all of the psychological hazards that was believed to entail. Yet, redefining diagnostic criteria cross-culturally was a fraught process that produced debates and conflicts that have shaped psychiatric discourse ever since. Psychiatric theories and concepts originally developed to suit the needs of particular segments of Euro-American populations were reformulated to meet the perceived needs of other cultures, viewed increasingly as deserving of psychiatric care on more or less equal terms, much as independent post-colonial nation-states were seeing incorporation into the global community on more or less equal terms. This talk argues that there is much to be gained from studying the history of transcultural psychiatry in the mid-20th century in terms of the local political conditions that were influencing psychiatric thinking in decolonizing environments such as Nigeria.
Irving Ludmer Building, Room 138
1033 Pine Ave West, Montreal, H3A 1A1
A Cost-effective Approach to Caring for People with Severe Mental Illness in Africa? The Saint-Camille de L茅llis NGO
Dr. Eric Latimer
Douglas Hospital Research Centre
September 21, 2017
Established more than two decades ago, the St-Camille de L茅llis is a non-governmental organization that currently operates in four French-speaking West-African countries: the Ivory Coast, Togo, Benin and Burkina Faso. The St-Camille now includes a dozen centers where people with mental illness are offered inexpensive medications and are cared for before being, normally, returned to their families. Each center houses about 200 residents at a time. Most of the minimal complement of staff at the centers, very often including the center director and nurses, are themselves patients still on medication. In evaluation new patients, nurses use a very simple tool developed by French psychiatrist from the association, Sant茅 mentale en Afrique de l'Ouest (SMAO). To date, the St-Camille has treated more than 66,000 individuals. During the summer of 2017, Eric Latimer visited the St-Camille with a view to exploring the potential for developing research projects the objectives of the presentation will be to:
- Describe in some detail (with photography) the functioning of the St-Camille;
- Describe the design of a just-initiated research project to evaluate the validity and reliability of the diagnostic tool developed by the SMAO;
- Describe additional emerging research project ideas concerning the St-Camille.
Irving Ludmer Building, Room 138
1033 Pine Ave West, Montreal, H3A 1A1
Evaluation of a parenting intervention in Uganda to address maternal well-being and child development
Frances Aboud, PhD
Professor Emerita, Department of Psychology, 91黑料网
March 16, 2017
As a health psychologist, she has lived in many countries of East Africa and South Asia, working with multidisciplinary teams to improve children鈥檚 health, growth and development. She has also helped to develop programs to promote health behaviours of adults, particularly parents, but also HIV-preventive practices among youth. For example, she has developed programs for parents in Bangladesh and Uganda to improve practices related to diet, hygiene, and psychosocial stimulation of their young children as well as mental well-being for mothers. Generally, she works with graduate students, local researchers, and NGOs; the latter implement the programs and then her team evaluates their process and outcomes. Likewise, she has worked to improve preschool offerings in many countries and raise their quality so children are not at a disadvantage when they arrive at primary school. She recently stepped down as one of the editors of Social Science and Medicine.
Irving Ludmer Building, Room 138
1033 Pine Ave West, Montreal, H3A 1A1
Creating supportive environments for health across the life course:
A strengths-based approach to overcoming intergenerational trauma and ongoing structural violence
Anne Andermann, MD, MPhil, DPhil, CCFP, FRCPC
March 23, 2017
Anne Andermann is a family doctor, a public health physician and the founding director of the CLEAR Collaboration (www.mcgill.ca/clear) that aims to help frontline health workers address the underlying social causes of poor health through a combination of direct patient care, referral and advocacy for larger social change. Currently, she is the Medical Specialist in Public Health and Preventive Medicine at Health Canada鈥檚 Quebec Regional Office, a Public Health Physician at the Cree Board of Health and Social Services of James Bay Northern Quebec, Chair of the Community Oriented Primary Care Committee at St Mary鈥檚 Hospital and the focal point at the 91黑料网 Faculty of Medicine responsible for incorporating a greater emphasis on the social determinants of health and a population health approach into the new medical school curriculum.
Irving Ludmer Building, Room 138
1033 Pine Ave West, Montreal, H3A 1A1
2017 Summer Program in Social and Cultural Psychiatry
Hosted by the Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry
May 1 - June 22, 2017
91黑料网
2017 Advanced Institute in Cultural Psychiatry
Pluralism and Polarization: Cultural Dynamics of Extremism and Radicalization
Hosted by the Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry
June 20-22, 2017
91黑料网