Moderator of 1 Session
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Presenter of 3 Presentations
What do Health/Mental Health Professionals Have to do With Racial Discrimination?
Abstract
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There is a growing evidence that social determinants of health influence the health outcomes. These non-medical factors, i.e., social determinants of health / mental health, are defined as the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age, including the factors shaping these conditions. They either have direct effects on health and ill health or work as mediators.
In this respect, racial discrimination is a fundamental social determinant of ill health / mental health and health inequalities. A strong correlation between reported experiences of racial discrimination and poor general health and poor mental health has been reported. Besides, racial discrimination may lead to risk taking behaviors increasing poor health / mental health especially in vulnerable disadvantaged populations. A leading factor mediating the negative effects of any biopsychosocial factor on mental ill health is the degree of discrimination. Furthermore, racial discrimination is one of the processes explaining and reinforcing racial disparities in health and ill health.
From a conceptual point of view, racial discrimination and its effects on ill health could be discussed in the context of the issue of othering and related dehumanization and violence. Psychiatrists and mental health workers have accumulated considerable knowledge and experience on understanding and overcoming some of the consequences of racial discrimination, especially via anti-stigma studies. The unfair and avoidable influences of racial discrimination on mental health are neither fated nor inevitable. As Gramsci had said, we have the pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will.
Cultural Factors of Suicidality
Abstract
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Suicidal behavior is a complex human behavior expressed in a spectrum of various acts. From a suicidal gesture to a completed suicide, all reflect a cry for help and need clinical and scientific attention. The process ending up with suicidal act is shaped by multi-factors, including the socio-cultural ones.
Suicide is indeed related to a deep feeling of hopelessness; not to have any control over their lives and circumstances except than deciding to stay alive or dead, and so related to serious psychopathologies, as depressive and substance use disorders. Hence, it is frequently seen as a personal act or as a question of individual decision. But since Durkheim‘s ground breaking work, which still inspires suicide researchers, the cultural factors behind this socially determined phenomenon have been widely discussed.
Suicide is totally a personal act and a fully socio-cultural phenomenon. The cultural factors of suicidality are among the social determinants of health/ill health. Epidemiological evidence and cross-cultural comparisons show huge differences in suicide rates across countries and even between regions of same countries, and these are constant differences. Furthermore, even the definition of suicide is effected by the social circumstances. Certain socio-cultural patterns shape how and when people commit suicide; i.e., these patterns have decreasing or increasing effect on suicide rates, which provides basis for suicide prevention. Likewise, social solidarity, high group integration and collective sensitivity may have preventive effects. This brings us to the discussion of the effects of big social turmoil or wars or pandemics on suicidal behavior.
Clarifying Definitions of „Race“, Racism, and Ethnocentrism
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Human beings need social group identities. These may be based on age, sex, gender and gender identity, ethnicity, religious beliefs, language, nationality and etc. In fact, in-group identities, collaborations and reference systems have positive effects on health / mental health. But, the problematic issue is the process of Othering and Dehumanization of the group designated to be the Other. Othering, rising from imagined or the expectation of generalized differences and used to distinguish groups of people as separate from the norm reinforces and maintains discrimination.
Social power relations determine the stratification of ‘them’ and ‘us’. Whether a group is to be designated as the Other and labelled with prejudice will depend on the zeitgeist of the current dominant social power. Dehumanization created many tragedies via genocide, slavery, racism, sexism, and other intolerant forms of violence. Theories, generally termed as scientific racism of late 19th. & early 20th. centuries, times of colonialism, assumed that some races are inferior to others, and that differential treatment of races is consequently justified. Such approaches led to movements of unification / purification practices which cannot be legitimate and caused vast individual and institutional racial discrimination, human rights violations and violence.
As a social determinant of health, racial discrimination and ethnocentrism, a powerful force that weakens human relations, continue to afflict the health and mental health conditions of people. Albeit racial discrimination, peoples of the world also have a history of effective praxis of inclusive ways of solving conflicts of interests between in-groups and out-groups.