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Barua M, Jadhav S, Kumar G, Gupta U, Justa P, Sinha A. Mental health ecologies and urban wellbeing. Health Place 2021; 69:102577. [PMID: 33934063 DOI: 10.1016/j.healthplace.2021.102577] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/26/2020] [Revised: 04/06/2021] [Accepted: 04/14/2021] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Abstract
How might urban mental health be understood when animals reconfigure human wellbeing in the lived city? Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork on people and macaques in New Delhi and forging novel conversations between urban studies, ecology and psychiatry, our ontology of urban mental health moves from lived experience of the built environment to those configured by dwelling with various interlocutors: animals, astral bodies and supernatural currents. These relations create microspaces of wellbeing, keeping forces of urban precarity at bay. This paper discusses mental health ecologies in different registers: subjectivity being environmental, its scale being relational rather than binary, enmeshed in the dynamics of other-than-human life, and involving conversations between medical and vernacular practices rather than hierarchies of knowledge.
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Affiliation(s)
- Maan Barua
- University Lecturer in Human Geography, Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, Downing Place, Cambridge, CB2 3EN, UK.
| | - Sushrut Jadhav
- Professor of Cultural Psychiatry, Division of Psychiatry, University College London, 6th Floor, Maple House, 149 Tottenham Court Road, London, W1T 7NF, UK.
| | - Gunjesh Kumar
- Researcher, Urban Animals Project, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Indian Institute of Science Campus, Bengaluru, 560 012, Karnataka, India.
| | - Urvi Gupta
- Researcher, Urban Animals Project, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Indian Institute of Science Campus, Bengaluru, 560 012, Karnataka, India.
| | - Priyanka Justa
- Researcher, Urban Animals Project, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Indian Institute of Science Campus, Bengaluru, 560 012, Karnataka, India.
| | - Anindya Sinha
- Professor of Animal Behaviour and Cognition, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Indian Institute of Science Campus, Bengaluru, 560 012, Karnataka, India.
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Capella Palacios M, Jadhav S. How coloniality shapes the making of Latin American psychologists: ethnographic evidence from Ecuador. Int Rev Psychiatry 2020; 32:348-358. [PMID: 32648498 DOI: 10.1080/09540261.2020.1761777] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/23/2022]
Abstract
This paper provides ethnographic evidence on how coloniality shapes the making of Latin American psychologists. A critical ethnography was conducted at a psychology training institution in Ecuador, consisting of twelve months of participant observation; forty-one semi-structured interviews; and analysis of academic discourse, photos, videos and relevant social media content. The research was guided by the tradition of Critical Psychology - specifically Liberation Psychology - and Critical Discourse Analysis. Findings suggest the pervasiveness of coloniality in the making of Ecuadorian psychologists and, hypothetically, of others in Latin America and the wider Global South. Interpretations also highlight the non-essentialist, non-dichotomist, 'messy' nature of such processes, a consideration which may advance current ethical and analytical debates on decolonisation. Echoing ongoing critical arguments, authors suggest that a 'help-as-war' metaphor is a category with potential value to contribute to such advancement, an approach that has important theoretical and pragmatic implications for researchers and practitioners.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Sushrut Jadhav
- Division of Psychiatry, University College London, London, UK
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3
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Napier AD, Ancarno C, Butler B, Calabrese J, Chater A, Chatterjee H, Guesnet F, Horne R, Jacyna S, Jadhav S, Macdonald A, Neuendorf U, Parkhurst A, Reynolds R, Scambler G, Shamdasani S, Smith SZ, Stougaard-Nielsen J, Thomson L, Tyler N, Volkmann AM, Walker T, Watson J, Williams ACDC, Willott C, Wilson J, Woolf K. Culture and health. Lancet 2014; 384:1607-39. [PMID: 25443490 DOI: 10.1016/s0140-6736(14)61603-2] [Citation(s) in RCA: 320] [Impact Index Per Article: 32.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/26/2023]
Affiliation(s)
| | - Clyde Ancarno
- Department of Education, King's College London, London, UK
| | | | | | - Angel Chater
- Department of Psychology, University of Bedfordshire, Bedfordshire, UK
| | | | - François Guesnet
- Hebrew and Jewish Studies, University College London, London, UK
| | - Robert Horne
- School of Pharmacy, University College London, London, UK
| | - Stephen Jacyna
- Centre for the History of Medicine, University College London, London, UK
| | - Sushrut Jadhav
- Division of Psychiatry, University College London, London, UK
| | | | | | | | - Rodney Reynolds
- Institute for Global Health, University College London, London, UK
| | | | - Sonu Shamdasani
- School of European Languages, Culture and Society, University College London, London, UK
| | | | | | - Linda Thomson
- Museums and Collections, University College London, London, UK
| | - Nick Tyler
- Civil Engineering, University College London, London, UK
| | - Anna-Maria Volkmann
- Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, University College London, London, UK
| | | | | | | | - Chris Willott
- Institute for Global Health, University College London, London, UK
| | - James Wilson
- Philosophy and Health, University College London, London, UK
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Jain S, Jadhav S. A Cultural Critique of Community Psychiatry in India. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HEALTH SERVICES 2008; 38:561-84. [DOI: 10.2190/hs.38.3.j] [Citation(s) in RCA: 30] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/22/2022]
Abstract
This article is the first comprehensive cultural critique of India's official community mental health policy and program. Data are based on a literature review of published papers, conference proceedings, analyses of official policy and popular media, interviews with key Indian mental health professionals, and fieldwork in Kanpur district, Uttar Pradesh (2004–2006). The authors demonstrate how three influences have shaped community psychiatry in India: a cultural asymmetry between health professionals and the wider society, psychiatry's search for both professional and social legitimacy, and WHO policies that have provided the overall direction to the development of services. Taken together, the consequences are that rural community voices have been edited out. The authors hypothesize that community psychiatry in India is a bureaucratic and culturally incongruent endeavor that increases the divide between psychiatry and local rural communities. Such a claim requires sustained ethnographic fieldwork to reveal the dynamics of the gap between community and professional experiences. The development of culturally sensitive psychiatric theory and clinical services is essential to improve the mental health of rural citizens who place their trust in India's biomedical network.
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Abstract
Focusing on the British cultural vocabulary of guilt, fatigue, energy, stress and depression; this paper argues that such vocabularies have their own unique histories and meanings; deeply embedded, in this instance, within "white British and western European" institutions. Predicated on a western epistemology, these constructs developed in response to prevailing concerns at different periods in western history; but are now assumed to be universal natural entities that await further scientific research and investigation. The cross-cultural validity of depression as a universal disorder is therefore dubious and needs an extensive re-examination.
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