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Analysing ‘modernity’ in India is a complex exercise, as the movement of the ‘modern’ is locally determined and may be non-linear at different sites and contexts. General medicine and psychiatry are illustrative of the difference in how ‘patienthood’ has been historically constructed, with each wave of ‘modernisation’ changing the subjecthood of the ‘mentally ill’. Unlike the public health sector in India, the mental health sector is driven by the ‘mental asylum’ archetype, continuing through late colonial times into contemporary science in refurbished designs. A related set of changes also concomitantly happened in the domain of indigenous healing, with each epistemic shift pushing this domain to the margins of knowledge and healing practice. The paper is set against the time period covering 1850s until recently (2014).

Disability and the Global South, 2014, Vol. 1 No. 2

This paper focuses on cultural issues associated with reforms of the mental health system in Ukraine. Specifically, the paper will explore the adoption of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10), with its heavy focus on biomedical definitions of health and illness, and the applicability of applying this model cross-culturally. Using first hand ethnographic data with psychiatrists, social workers and advocates, as well as patients or ‘bolnoi’ (bolnoi translates literally as ‘an ill person’) of psychiatric services, I argue that ‘mental illness’ is not always, or solely, biological, but also culturally shaped, and therefore a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to mental health becomes problematic. I follow this argument with a discussion of how social problems more generally come to be redefined in Ukraine as medical in nature, where issues such as gender relations, alcoholism, poverty and environmental disasters are subject to medicalization. Here ‘symptoms of oppression’ or ‘distress’ are diagnosed within a psychiatric framework and become ‘symptoms of illness’, to be treated within the biomedical arena. This redefinition places the responsibility for larger societal issues on the individual and ignores the social and environmental underpinnings of suffering - a dynamic that was also operative in the Soviet system. I argue that the growing popularity of the medicalization of behavior coupled with its relationship with the pharmaceutical industry is thus a moral issue, and one with harmful results.

Disability and the Global South, 2014, Vol. 1 No. 2

Neurasthenia—a term first coined by American neurologist George M. Beard in the 1860s—was a ‘malady of civilization’ associated with cerebral overpressure from the stresses of modern industrial life (Rabinbach, 1992:154). Many scholars of neurasthenia assume this psychopathological ‘disease of the will’ was a white disease that disappeared from Western medical practice since the early twentieth century. However, in this paper, I argue that not only has neurasthenia traveled to non-Western contexts, but that its genealogy as a culture-bound syndrome continues to haunt the present in North American cross-cultural counselling. Through a textual analysis of multicultural psychology textbooks published over the last decade, I argue these ‘traits’ serve to sequester problems of oppression into the private, apolitical space of family and culture, renarrativizing experiences of racial profiling, classroom segregation, worker disablement, and poverty as culturally determined mental health problems.

Disability and the Global South, 2014, Vol. 1 No. 2

Articles include:

• EDITORIAL Globalising Mental Health or Pathologising the Global South? Mapping the Ethics, Theory and Practice of Global Mental Health
• How ‘evidence-based’ is the Movement for Global Mental Health?
• Reciprocity in Global Mental Health Policy
• Culture, Politics and Global Mental Health
• Globalizing psychiatry and the case of ‘vanishing’ alternatives in a neo- colonial state
• Faith Healing in India: The Cultural Quotient of the Critical
• Mental Health Care, Diagnosis, and the Medicalization of Social Problems in Ukraine
• Passive-Aggressive: Māori Resistance and the Continuance of Colonial Psychiatry in Aotearoa New Zealand
• Neurasthenia Revisited: Psychologising precarious labor and migrant status in contemporary discourses of Asian American nervousness
• Tools for the journey from North to South: A collaborative process to develop reflexive global mental health practice

The alleged shooting by Paralympian and Olympian athlete Oscar Pistorius of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp has led to strong reactions worldwide. Scholars in the field of disability studies have expressed shock and disappointment in response both to the death itself and to its implications for the representation of disability. In South Africa in the wake of the death of Ms Steenkamp, much has been made both by critics of Pistorius and by his defenders about his status as a white South African man, but little has been said about disability issues. This silence in South Africa about disability as a possible identity factor in this case draws attention to the extent to which disability questions remain profoundly raced and gendered, and influenced by the colonial and apartheid past. The tragic alleged shooting by Oscar Pistorius draws attention back to how important intersectionality is to understanding disability in South Africa and other unequal societies.

Purpose:

The aim of this study was to explore the psychosocial impact of standing devices as experienced by users. 

Method:

This is the second part of a comprehensive survey in five counties in Sweden where all the subjects with standing devices were invited to participate. The impact of standing devices on functional independence, quality of life and wellbeing was assessed using a questionnaire, Psychosocial Impact of Assistive Devices Scale (PIADS).

Results:

The psychosocial impact of the standing devices was perceived as positive. The highest PIADS scores in relation to age were found in the oldest group, aged 65 years and older. The ability to walk and independence in ambulation resulted in higher scores than the use of a wheelchair and/or dependence on others. Those who stood often awarded higher scores in the PIADS questionnaire compared to those who used the device less frequently. When standing was integrated in various activities, its psychosocial impact received high scores. 

Conclusion:

The psychosocial impact of standing devices was generally experienced positively. The main results indicated that standing in a standing device had a value and we as professionals should ask the users about the intended purpose of their standing in order to prescribe the optimal device.

This short video by film-maker Tomislav Zaja chronicles the stories of persons with disabilities in Croatia and Romania and their testimonies about institutional care and independent living in the community. The supporting article by Judith Klein, Director of the Mental Health Initiative at the Open Society Foundations, gives further background to the fight for the right to independent living in the community for and by persons with disabilities, and refers to a petition submitted to the European Union by  the  Open Society Mental Health Initiative. This video will be useful to anyone working particularly on social inclusion issues in eastern Europe

This paper presents the findings of a "participatory research project, developed collaboratively between Australian and Cambodian partners, (that) investigated prevalence and experiences of gender-based violence of women with disabilities in comparison to women without disabilities; assessed the extent to which existing policies and programs include or address women with disabilities; and explored how women with disabilities are supported or denied access to existing programs"
AusAID Research Working Paper 1

This document provides practical guidance and examples on how to remove barriers and make interventions more inclusive during humanitarian crises and natural disasters