Critical Inquiries for Social Justice in Mental Health

521 Pages·2017·4.173 MB·English

by  Lorraine Malcoe (editor)

CRITICAL INQUIRIES FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE
IN MENTAL HEALTH
Edited by Marina Morrow and Lorraine Halinka Malcoe
An exceptional showcase of interdisciplinary research, Critical Inquiries
for Social Justice in Mental Health presents various critical theories, meth-
odologies, and methods for transforming mental health research and fos-
tering socially just mental health praxis.
Marina Morrow and Lorraine Halinka Malcoe have brought together a
diverse group of scholars, activists, and practitioners whose work exposes
and disrupts the biomedical, neoliberal, and individualistic practices that
permeate contemporary mental health research, policy, and practice. The
contributors employ a variety of methodologies including intersectional,
decolonizing, Mad studies, feminist, post-structural, transgender, queer,
and critical realist to interrogate how power relations manifest in local to
global mental health systems and their impact on people with mental dis-
tress. By privileging the voices of people with lived experiences of emotion-
al distress and psychiatry, the collection encourages the reader to envision
systems and supports designed from the bottom up, in which the people
most affected have decision-making authority over their formations.
Critical Inquiries for Social Justice in Mental Health demonstrates why and
how theory matters for knowledge production, policy, and practice in men-
tal health, and it creates new imaginings of decolonized and democratized
mental health systems, of abundant community-centred supports, and of
a world where human differences are affirmed.
marina morrow is professor and chair of the School of Health Policy
and Management at York University.
lorraine halinka malcoe is associate professor of social epidemiol-
ogy in the Joseph J. Zilber School of Public Health at the University of
Wisconsin–Milwaukee, and adjunct professor in the Faculty of Health Sci-
ences at Simon Fraser University.
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Critical Inquiries for Social
Justice in Mental Health
EDITED BY MARINA MORROW
AND LORRAINE HALINKA MALCOE
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS
Toronto Buffalo London
© University of Toronto Press 2017
Toronto Buffalo London
www.utppublishing.com
Printed in Canada
ISBN 978-1-4426-4920-0 (cloth) ISBN 978-1-4426-2662-1 (paper)
Printed on acid-free paper.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Critical inquiries for social justice in mental health / edited by Marina Morrow
and Lorraine Halinka Malcoe.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4426-2662-1 (paper). ISBN 978-1-4426-4920-0 (cloth)
1. Mental health services – Research. 2. Social justice – Research. I. Morrow,
Marina, 1963–, author, editor II. Malcoe, Lorraine Halinka, 1962–, author,
editor
RA790.5.C75 2017 362.2072 C2017-900530-8
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its
publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts
Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario.
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support of the Government
of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for its publishing activities.
Funded by the Financé par le
Government gouvernement
of Canada du Canada
Contents
Preface ix
Introduction: Science, Social (In)Justice, and Mental Health 3
lorraine halinka malcoe and marina morrow
Part One: Foregrounding Social Justice Theorizing
1 “Women and Madness” Revisited: The Promise of Intersectional
and Mad Studies Frameworks 33
marina morrow
2 A “Third Space” for Doing Social Justice Research 60
viviane josewski
3 Global Psychiatrization and Psychic Colonization: The Coloniality
of Global Mental Health 87
china mills
Part Two: Decolonizing Research and Practice
4 Mental Health in Africa: Human Rights Approaches
to Decolonization 113
mohamed ibrahim
5 Dancing with Complexity: Decolonization and Social Justice
Dialogues 138
ruby peterson and sabina chatterjee
vi Contents
6 Melq’ilwiye (Coming Together): Re-imagining Mental Health
for Urban Indigenous Youth through Intersections of Identity,
Sovereignty, and Resistance 165
natalie clark, patrick walton, julie drolet, tara tribute,
georgia jules, talicia main, and mike arnouse
Part Three: Gendering, Discourse, and Power
7 Is It Normal or PMS? Women’s Strategies in Negotiating
and Resisting Negative Premenstrual Change 197
jane m. ussher and janette perz
8 Depression in Workplaces: Governmentality, Feminist Analysis,
and Neoliberalism 229
katherine teghtsoonian
9 Gender Non-conformity or Psychiatric Non-compliance?
How Organized Non-compliance Can Offer a Future without
Psychiatry 255
jemma tosh
Part Four: Media as a Site of Social (In)Justice
10 (De)Pathologization: Transsexuality, Gynecomastia, and the
Negotiation of Mental Health Diagnoses in Online Communities 285
t. garner
11 “One in Five”: The Prevalence Problematic in Mental Illness
Discourse 312
tanya titchkosky and katie aubrecht
12 Madness in the Media: An Intersectional Analysis of Educational
Films and Television Programming, 1940–69 333
wendy chan and dorothy e. chunn
Part Five: Refashioning Research for Social Justice Praxis
13 Ethics, Research, and Advocacy: The Experiences of the NAOMI
Patients Association in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside 365
susan boyd, dave murray, and naomi patients association
Contents vii
14 Using Arts-Based Methods to Create Research Spaces That Encourage
Meaningful Dialogue 386
indrani margolin, terry krupa, sean kidd,
darrell burnham, dawn hemingway, michelle patterson,
and denise zabkiewicz
15 Disrupting Dominant Discourses: Rethinking Services and Systems
for Women with Experiences of Abuse 413
louise godard and viviane josewski, with jill cory,
alexxa abi-jaoudé, lorraine halinka malcoe,
and victoria smye
16 An Intersectionality Approach to Resilience Research:
Centring Structural Analysis, Resistance, and Social Justice 443
sarah chown and lorraine halinka malcoe
Contributors 475
Index 487
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Preface
Books typically have a long period of gestation, arising from multiple in-
fluences, intellectual encounters, and conversations. This collection is no
exception. Critical Inquiries for Social Justice in Mental Health began to
germinate during several years of exciting national and international col-
laborations among scholars, practitioners, and activists who have been on
the cutting edge of researching and redressing social inequities in men-
tal health. These collaborations were nurtured through the Centre for the
Study of Gender, Social Inequities, and Mental Health (2009–15),1 which
included thirty-two scholars2 from Canada, the United States, the United
Kingdom, and Australia, as well as an advisory committee and multiple
knowledge brokers with representation from a wide range of community
organizations, government departments, and social justice advocates. The
centre quickly rose to the forefront of developing research methodologies
to investigate how social inequities, and the oppressive systems that sus-
tain them, operate in mental health.
From its inception the centre foregrounded the contributions of people
with lived experiences of mental distress and psychiatry. It fostered dia-
logue across differences in mental health experiences, scholars from diverse
disciplinary backgrounds, and people working in different sectors of men-
tal health. The centre was committed in its operations to finding ways to
ensure that people who had experienced psychiatrization could engage with
the centre without having to assume psychiatric labels or identities. In hir-
ing research assistants and in adjudicating competitive trainee fellowships,
the centre encouraged applicants who could bring their experiences of psy-
chiatry and the mental health system to their work, as well as those who
had lived experiences of resisting other forms of social marginalization.
The centre had research teams in five related theme areas: violence, mental
health, and substance use; mental health reform and policy; criminalization,