Decolonization and Mental Health

In recent years, growing attention has been paid to the decolonization of mental health. Although many formerly colonized countries achieved political independence during the twentieth century, Western-centered systems of knowledge, professional training, service delivery, research standards, and development assistance have continued to shape mental health policy and practice around the world. As a result, mental distress has often been individualized and medicalized, while historical violence, structural inequality, cultural context, and collective experiences of suffering and healing have received insufficient attention.

Decolonizing mental health does not mean simply rejecting psychiatry, psychology, or evidence-based care. Rather, it invites critical reflection on the power relations embedded in knowledge production, diagnosis, intervention, education, and global health partnerships. It also calls for renewed attention to local, Indigenous, community-based, and lived-experience knowledge, and to culturally grounded ways of understanding distress, care, recovery, and well-being.

This session invites theoretical, empirical, educational, clinical, community-based, and policy-oriented contributions that examine decolonization in mental health. We welcome presentations that explore historical and structural trauma, epistemic justice, culturally responsive care, community and collective well-being, Indigenous and local knowledge systems, participatory research, and the transformation of global mental health practices. The session aims to create a space for dialogue on how mental health can be reimagined in more equitable, culturally grounded, and socially just ways.