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Reconciling a Broken Heritage: Developing Mental Health Social Work in Guyana
Guyana’s colonial past has left a trail of economic instability, racial polarization, and physical and mental trauma. Despite the progress made since Guyana’s independence in 1966, the remnants of this colonial past continue to shape present-day Guyana. As a result, violence and trauma continue to i...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10606164/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37887669 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20206931 |
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author | Halley, Coya Cowden, Stephen |
author_facet | Halley, Coya Cowden, Stephen |
author_sort | Halley, Coya |
collection | PubMed |
description | Guyana’s colonial past has left a trail of economic instability, racial polarization, and physical and mental trauma. Despite the progress made since Guyana’s independence in 1966, the remnants of this colonial past continue to shape present-day Guyana. As a result, violence and trauma continue to impact the mental health of the population. This is manifest in endemic problems of domestic violence and racialized social divisions which have created the conditions for rates of suicide which are amongst the highest in the world. The formal mental health provision which exists in Guyana is based primarily on an individualized and largely biomedical model of care. Despite valuable attempts to develop this provision, the difficulty of physically accessing this for some people and the stigma which surround this means that the capacity of this system to address the serious problems which exist is limited. It is also the case that in times of emotional and psychic distress, and in the context of Guyana being a very religious country, many people turn to traditional supernatural healers and remedies for support. In this paper, we discuss what is known as “Obeah”, noting that while this is widely practiced, it remains something of a taboo subject in Guyana. We consider the reasons why these practices and beliefs continue to be influential. However, what neither these biomedical or supernatural perceptions of mental health are able to address is the sociogenic nature of Guyana’s mental health issues, which we argue emerges out of the historic trauma of Guyana’s experience of colonialism and the violence which it engendered. We argue that profound forms of mental distress which exist in Guyana call for an integrative and holistic practice model that contextualizes these problems through a sociogenic lens. Social workers, working collaboratively with other health-related professions, can occupy a critical role in integrating these different conceptions through developing a rights-based model of mental health where the causes of mental ill-health are understood as socially determined. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10606164 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-106061642023-10-28 Reconciling a Broken Heritage: Developing Mental Health Social Work in Guyana Halley, Coya Cowden, Stephen Int J Environ Res Public Health Essay Guyana’s colonial past has left a trail of economic instability, racial polarization, and physical and mental trauma. Despite the progress made since Guyana’s independence in 1966, the remnants of this colonial past continue to shape present-day Guyana. As a result, violence and trauma continue to impact the mental health of the population. This is manifest in endemic problems of domestic violence and racialized social divisions which have created the conditions for rates of suicide which are amongst the highest in the world. The formal mental health provision which exists in Guyana is based primarily on an individualized and largely biomedical model of care. Despite valuable attempts to develop this provision, the difficulty of physically accessing this for some people and the stigma which surround this means that the capacity of this system to address the serious problems which exist is limited. It is also the case that in times of emotional and psychic distress, and in the context of Guyana being a very religious country, many people turn to traditional supernatural healers and remedies for support. In this paper, we discuss what is known as “Obeah”, noting that while this is widely practiced, it remains something of a taboo subject in Guyana. We consider the reasons why these practices and beliefs continue to be influential. However, what neither these biomedical or supernatural perceptions of mental health are able to address is the sociogenic nature of Guyana’s mental health issues, which we argue emerges out of the historic trauma of Guyana’s experience of colonialism and the violence which it engendered. We argue that profound forms of mental distress which exist in Guyana call for an integrative and holistic practice model that contextualizes these problems through a sociogenic lens. Social workers, working collaboratively with other health-related professions, can occupy a critical role in integrating these different conceptions through developing a rights-based model of mental health where the causes of mental ill-health are understood as socially determined. MDPI 2023-10-17 /pmc/articles/PMC10606164/ /pubmed/37887669 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20206931 Text en © 2023 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Essay Halley, Coya Cowden, Stephen Reconciling a Broken Heritage: Developing Mental Health Social Work in Guyana |
title | Reconciling a Broken Heritage: Developing Mental Health Social Work in Guyana |
title_full | Reconciling a Broken Heritage: Developing Mental Health Social Work in Guyana |
title_fullStr | Reconciling a Broken Heritage: Developing Mental Health Social Work in Guyana |
title_full_unstemmed | Reconciling a Broken Heritage: Developing Mental Health Social Work in Guyana |
title_short | Reconciling a Broken Heritage: Developing Mental Health Social Work in Guyana |
title_sort | reconciling a broken heritage: developing mental health social work in guyana |
topic | Essay |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10606164/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37887669 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20206931 |
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