Friday Morning Seminar in Culture, Psychiatry and Global Mental Health (Zoom)
Date and Time
Location
"Breaking the Wall of Oppression and Social Defeat In The Clinic"
Attend this event via Zoom (advance registration required)
Speakers:
Sushrut Jadhav, Professor of Cultural Psychiatry, University College London.
Prof. Kahoda, Professor of economics at a metropolitan university in South Asia.
Prof. Astha-Vakra, Professor, teaches storytelling to a diverse range of students in a metropolitan university in South Asia.
Contact:
Sadeq Rahimi
Sadeq_Rahimi@hms.harvard.edu
This seminar is cosponsored by the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School.
This event is online only. Please click the "Read More" link for full instructions on how to attend this seminar.
Remote Access Information:
To join by computer:
https://harvard.zoom.us/j/99114610997
Please note: This event requires a password to attend. Please email Dr. Rahimi (sadeq_rahimi@hms.harvard.edu) with a brief introduction of yourself to receive the meeting password.
Abstract:
The discipline of Mental health in India is in moral denial about how the institution of Caste is a deeply rooted social pathology embodied in the Clinic. Textbooks don’t discuss this, and teachers and trainees are disabled by their identities to address this pervasive social sickness. Consequently, mental health professionals invest considerable effort in silencing themselves. This seminar details an open-ended clinical intervention guided by key tenets of liberation psychologies and the author’s journey through the corridors of oppression. During this intensive work, the therapist’s and his subject’s wounds spoke to each other. Their sense of social defeat blended into an alchemy of individual liberation and incremental growth in both therapist and subjects. As therapy progressed, it became evident that all subjects, the therapist included, were keen to liberate themselves from their perceived oppressive experiences. Sessions involved collaborative ways of creating ruptures, reclaiming agency and dignity and aligning with routes to social justice.