Embodying mental health in development

Abstract

This thesis proposes a rethinking of mental health interventions in developing countries by examining policies that took place in the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami in Sri Lanka, using anthropological concepts influenced by phenomenology such as the notion of embodiment. Contestations regarding the Cartesian mind-body duality have led to various methods of understanding the human being, with materialist biomedicine dominating Western psychiatry due to its scientific ‘rigour.’ However, Western psychiatry’s universalist assumptions – a one-size-fits-all understanding of mental anguish – have failed to achieve its objectives, particularly in non-Western settings. This is because such policies thus far have maintained a biomedicine-centric stance that pathologises mental suffering, with little room for integrating local perspectives. In order to rectify mistakes, mental health professionals must understand how sufferers of mental distress process phenomena beyond solely biomedical or culturalist frames, focusing instead on the experience itself that incorporates both sides of the spectrum when necessary. I further argue that by reconsidering the meaning of experience and participation in everyday life, its conclusions can be applied to participatory development. This can take place through working together with the sufferers by encouraging their participation in formulating mental health programmes and listening to them with empathy, to find suitable emic-etic frameworks. Through promoting collaborative mental health policies as a citizenship right, the issue of ‘political will’ is also challenged through local community mobilisation, while re-defining the meaning of ‘participation’ during the process.