Past Events

  Rethinking Mental Health from a Decolonial Perspective

A Talk with Dr. Ismahan Soukeyna Diop, Cheikh Anta Diop University, Dakar

Organized by the Institute for Study of Social Racial Justice and the Department of French

Academic Building, Room 4190
15 Seminary Place, New Brunswick 

 

In 2020, the department of Psychology at the Université Cheikh Anta Diop of Dakar was reopened, 53 years after it was closed by the government due to political unrest. This has brought the question of teaching a realistic curriculum in phase with people’s lives in Africa. Most of the science in psychology, psychopathology and even psychoanalysis, is based on the same theories that were used to stigmatize and diminish non-European people through epistemic violence and promote Eurocentric ideologies. Building a decolonial curriculum is teaching the reality of actual psychologists and psychiatrists in their current practice in Africa. As a clinical psychologist and a psychotherapist, Dr. Ismahan Soukeyna Diop has come to develop a culturally relevant method for psychotherapy, based on oral tradition, and consider Senegalese representations of mental health as a theoretical basis for this method. This presentation will define those bases, explain how they shape people’s individual and social representations and introduce a decolonial method for psychotherapy that uses indigenous content as a lever for the therapeutic alliance.

 

Contact: Hugo Bujon, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.