XClose

UCL News

Home
Menu

Mental health at the margins: short course in India

14 January 2008

Links:

Dr Jadhav ucl.ac.uk/drupal/site_news/sites/news/files/BALMpdf.pdf">Course details (pdf)
  • BALM
  • Dr Jadhav
  • UCL and the Banyan Academy of Leadership in Mental Health (BALM) have joined forces to provide a short course on mental-health at the margins, to be held in India from 11-14 February 2008.

    Entitled 'Mental Health at the Margins,' the course is directed by Dr Sushrut Jadhav (UCL Medicine) - an expert in cross-cultural psychiatry. The course will be led by pioneering clinicians with a background in mental health & medical anthropology from UCL together with BALM professionals working at the forefront of innovative and unique social development work with the homeless population in Chennai. The cross-national faculty members have a consistent track record in working at the theoretical and practical aspects of marginal populations in India and the UK.

    The course is for mental-health professionals from NGO and government health institutions, working with marginal and displaced populations in South Asia, but it will also benefit professionals from backgrounds such as rights activists, law-enforcement officials, judiciary and donor organisations, who play a key role in working with mental health of destitute and refugee population.

    Dr Jadhav said: "We aim to address through this short introductory course, a broad definition and understanding of theory and practice related to mental health and marginality from both Western and South Asian perspectives.

    Utilising definitions of 'disease', 'sickness' and 'illness' taken from the social sciences and in particular, recent developments in the field of medical anthropology, this course would provide an overview to examine mental health of marginal groups in relation to gender, class, religion, caste, politics and development in the Indian setting. Trainee participants will better appreciate issues pertaining to debt, poverty, violence, stigma, power relations and how these can be translated on the ground, where actions to overcome these problems can impact most usefully and significantly. The focus will be on local problems and local solutions, by incorporating recent advances in social science theory."

    To find out more, use the links at the top of this article.

    Image: Dr Jadhav