Ethnographies of Migrant Mental Health in the United States (SMA) - Soerens

Ethnographies of Migrant Mental Health in the United States (SMA)

CHAIRS: CARNEY, Megan (U Wash) and SOOD, Anubha (SMU) 

GUEVARA, Emilia M. and SANGARAMOORTHY, Thurka (UMD) The Place that Time Forgot: Gender, Labor, and Immigration on Maryland’s Eastern Shore 

SOOD, Anubha (SMU) Psychotic Processes and Gendered Selves: Exploring South Asian Notions of Love and Kinship in a US Psychiatric Clinic 

SOERENS, Maria-Jose (Puentes: Advocacy, Counseling & Ed) Becoming a Victim: Governance and the Lived Experience of Asylum Seekers in the U.S. CARNEY, Megan A. (U Wash) The Terrain of Migrant Mental Health in the United States: Highlighting Disparities, Advocating for Response 

DISCUSSANT: SARGENT, Carolyn (WUSTL)

 

ABSTRACT:

CARNEY, Megan (U Wash) and SOOD, Anubha (SMU) Ethnographies of Migrant Mental Health in the United States. Studies show increased rates of psychiatric illnesses in migrant populations. Research seeking to explain this rate disparity focuses on risk factors such as the deprived environments and marginalization of immigrant communities. However, the search for psychosocial risk factors obscures questions of meaning and experience of immigration and mental suffering. This panel focuses on the narratives of immigrants with psychiatric diagnoses to explore the conceptual affinity of the phenomena of psychiatric illnesses and immigration, of how the notions of disruption in life narratives in both these ‘states of being’ lead to suffering translated as psychiatric illness.

Session took place in Vancouver, B.C. Canada at the 76th Annual Meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology, March 29 - April 2, 2016.