Master Class 1: Tradition of Mental Health and illness; what diversity means.
Social and cultural issues in England
Social construction of 'race'
Historical context of Psychiatry
History of Melancholia as Illness
Cross-cultural variation of depression
Traditions of Western Psychiatry and Psychology
Culture and 'Mind'
Ideals of mental health
Liberation / Therapy
Concept of schizophrenia
Racism in the 19th Century
Racist discourse in modern time
Master Class 2: Critical Psychiatry and Psychology: Transcultural Psychiatry, Cultural Psychiatry, Anti-racist Psychiatry.
Problems of being culturally sensitive
Institutional Racism
Blackwood Inquiry Report
Impediments to change
Transcultural psychiatry
Diagnostic misperceptions
Machinery of psychiatry in context
Psychiatric Diagnoses
Can the concept of schizophrenia last?
Cross-cultural variation of depression
Diagnosis, loss fr liberty / compulsory treatment
Mental health for all
Master Class 3: Mental Health around the Globe: Different approaches to developing mental health in communities and individuals.
Problems of cross-cultural international research
WHO IPSS Study; five year outcomes
Universal definitions of mental health
Healing systems in Sri Lanka
Recent publications Some recent papers
Home-grown System
Building mental health services in Developing Countries
Projects in Sri Lanka
Innovative developments in the statutory sector
Bottom-up development
Extending from social care into mental health
Stakeholders for developing mental health services in the community
Master Class 5: Movement to reform psychiatry in UK: How to make effective changes.
Racial and Cultural issues in England
Official reports
Delivering Race Equality (DRE) and why it failed
Barriers to systemic change
Guiding principles in Scottish Mental Health Act
Paradigm shift may be unrealistic
Changes in legal framework
New approaches and shifting models
Changes in professional training
Home Grown Mental Health.
Video of a talk by Suman Fernando recorded on the 7th of July 2012 after he had presented at the Advanced Study Institute Workshop held at the McGillSummer Program in Social & Cultural Psychiatry at Montreal.
Institutional Racism in Psychiatry
A talk given by Suman Fernando at the invitation of West End Primary Care Network of C & NW L NHS Trust at Zoom meeting on the 5th of November 2020.
Institutional Racism in the Context of Cultural Diversity.
Made for a virtual conference of the DGPNN (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Psychiatrie und Psychotherapie, Psychosomatik und Nervenheilkunde e. V. (German Association for Psychiatry,
Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics) held at Berlin on the 26th to 28th of November 2020 ansd presented on 28 November 2020. Download the accompanying PowerPoint.
Psychosis and Institutional Racism.
A talk given on the 13th of November 2018 at an event organised by The ISPS (The International Society for Psychological and Social Approaches to Psychosis) in London.
Download the accompanying PowerPoint.
Whose Mind is it Anyway? [The video starts playing 18 seconds in.]
Digitised from a video cassette. A documentary first broadcast in 1995 that depicts experiences of a young Black man in the British psychiatric system. The film raises the questions as to who owns the 'mind'; and about the power of the state acting through psychiatry in subjugating Black people to conform to expectations of White society. The documentary raises questions (of particular importance for mental health professionals) as to the nature of 'mental illness'; what 'treatment' is meant to do to users of the services provided; who should decide on what 'outcomes' are about; the power of racism institutionalised in the system; and the responsibilities of staff to speaking out when they see injustice and the need for resisting racism in all parts of society, including the mental health system.
Why is my Curriculum White?
This video was produced by the 'Why is my Curriculum White?' collective of students at University College London in 2015 leading to a campaign across many British universities. They published '8 Reasons the Curriculum is White' on the 23rd of March 2015.
Hear What We Are Saying.
This video that runs for about 55 minutes was made from a tape cassette of a recording made in 1995 by 'The Ethno-Racial Mental Health Committee' of Toronto and Across Boundaries - the NGO was established in 1993 through the endeavours of three remarkable women of color, community activists in Toronto at the time, Martha Ocampo, Shaheen Ali and Amoy Ong (who appear in the film). The film depicts the voices of women of color of Toronto which reflect those of women in many such groups in North America and Europe, caught up in the struggle against institutional racism in the mental health systems underpinned by (Western) psychiatry and clinical psychology.
Stirring Change. The Work of Nest.[May only start playing properly 20 seconds in.]
Digitised from a VHS tape made by Nest, a Community Based Mental Project in Sri Lanka that was started by Mrs Sally Hulugalle and Mrs Kamini de Soysa in October 1984. The project was preceded by an island wide campaign "The Forgotten Women" aimed at making life more comfortable for the 1500 women they found living in deplorable conditions in 'Unit 2' of Mulleriyawa Hospital, an institution built as a rehabilitation centre but re-designated as a unit for women to ease over-crowding at the only mental hospital in the whole island at the time. In 2004 Nest signed an agreement with the Ministry of Health to run a Skills Development Centre at Mulleriyawa and women from 'Unit 2' were permitted to attend it. Gradually Unit 2, once notorious as place of abuse and neglect became transformed and was renamed a 'half-way house'.
Since 2012, Nest has extended its services by opening several houses in the southern parts of the island, and, after the end of the civil war, in the North East. Community workers trained by Nest work from these houses to help communities to cope when a crisis occurs so that their kith and kin may remain in their own home rather than be abandoned to institutionalisation. The film shows aspects of its community work and the houses that provide limited short stay facilities for people in trouble.
