Enough Politeness: Decolonising Mental Health in a Society Oblivious to Its Colonial Wounds - MHI

ISSUE NO. 6 OCTOBER

THE MARIWALA HEALTH INITIATIVE JOURNAL

Re-Vision

Contesting Global Mental Health

World Mental Health Day, Medicalised Mental Health Awareness, and Psychiatric Subjectivation

Authoritarian Neoliberal Regimes and Global Mental Health

Enough Politeness: Decolonising Mental Health in a Society Oblivious to Its Colonial Wounds

Work with Us, Not against Us

Context

Mental Health in the Time of Genocide

Reshaping Narratives: Reproductive Justice among Women in Kashmir

Mental Health and Marginalisation

Warriors Within: Decoding the Paradox of Strength and Vulnerability among the Naga Tribe

Redefining Queerscapes through Poetry

The Impact of AFSPA on the Mental Health of the Naga People

Engage

Collective Healing and Trauma-Informed Approaches for the Mental Health of Survivors of Trafficking

Assessing the Effectiveness of the Mental Health Equity Global Agenda for Low- and Middle-Income Countries 

Fostering Mental Healthcare in a Postcolonial Continent with Digital Medicine

Tackling Mental Health Inequalities for Roma Communities in the UK

Behind Bars

RE-VISION

04

PERSPECTIVE

Enough Politeness: Decolonising Mental Health
in a Society Oblivious to Its Colonial Wounds

How to Transform Mental Health through
Confronting Colonial Legacies in Health Discourse

Cammi Murrup-Stewart and Madeline Wills

AUTHOR

Keisha Leon

illustrator

author’s bio

Cammi Murrup-Stewart and Madeline Wills

Cammi Murrup-Stewart is an Aboriginal woman, cross-cultural researcher, and lead of the Murrup Bung’allambee Indigenous Psychology Group, Monash University. Her research focuses on the social and emotional well-being of Aboriginal youth, equity, centring the voices of marginalised peoples, and supporting connection and strong identities to improve well-being.

Madeline Wills is a Warramungu Aboriginal woman, mental health practitioner, and community engagement officer with the Murrup Bung’allambee Indigenous Psychology Group, Monash University. Mady’s work and research focus on improving Indigenous youth’s mental health, digital tools for well-being, and fostering cultural safety.

illustrator’s bio

Amreeta Banerjee

Alice A. Barwa completed her MA in Education from Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Univerity, Delhi (AUD), in 2022, and is from the Oraon Adivasi community, a native of Chhotanagpur Plateau, Chhattisgarh. She has been an advocate for Adivasi rights and voices as a member of an Adivasi youth collective @TheAdivasiPost, and has been an Adivasi youth representative at UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, in 2021. Her research interests include education, culture, sociology, and linguistics.

The Science behind Colonial Trauma

As Aboriginal women, we have had enough of the polite silence that masks the deep wounds society continues to inflict upon our culture. The prevailing mental health discourse, chained to a Eurocentric biomedical model, undermines our cultural practices and pays no heed to the ongoing colonisation that bleeds into every aspect of our lives. 

In October 2023, Australia held a referendum seeking constitutional recognition of over 65,000 years of Indigenous culture as well as advisory representation and government. As the only colonised nation without a formal treaty or comprehensive agreement with its First Peoples, Australia – a British settler colony that colonised over 250 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Countries – continues to struggle with its coloniality. Declining media integrity, globalised politics, and social media echo chambers shape public debate in the country. As a consequence, more than 60% of Australians opposed the suggested constitutional changes. Having national debates on topics such as recognising the First Peoples of Australia, places communities in a vulnerable position, often producing fatal mental health consequences. Even within weeks of our collective grief at the fact that more than 60% of our neighbours voted against our rights to inclusion and representation in our own country, many First Nations people in so-called-Australia had to switch focus from our local struggle with ongoing colonisation to the global reality of horrifically violent colonisation and genocide in Gaza. 

While we oscillate between despair and rage, meeting with our therapists to unload some of this burden, we cannot help but see this as an unveiling of the ongoing colonisation, hidden behind capitalist success and democratic ‘civilisation’, to reveal the ugly truth of our world. Indigenous Peoples have known this from the beginning. Colonisation and its various gaudy costumes – patriarchy, capitalism, racism, ableism, and environmental exploitation – continue to perpetuate systemic inequalities and injustices, deeply impacting the well-being of those living under its iron boot. Healthcare systems are only another piece of this puzzle.

Biomedicine’s Cultural Negligence

The biomedical mental health model, long dictating mental distress understanding and treatment, neglects colonial trauma’s impact.

Why are natural human responses to stressors like climate change, war, poverty, isolation, and oppression – such as anxiety, depression, and even psychosis – pathologised?

Why are we labelled as disordered when we react to the disorder around us? Is it not natural to feel despair when our phone is full of images of innocents dying, of our lands burning and flooding, of pandemics forever altering our reality, and of the rise in hatred and disunity? If we consider what a healthy response to the crisis is, then perhaps we can see the decline in global mental health as a legitimate reaction to our environment. Humans are meant to grieve. We are built to live in connection with one another, and when disconnected, we are fundamentally not whole – we are unhealthy. Pathologising natural responses to near-constant existential threats does no one any good. Instead, what this does is direct attention to vulnerable communities who sit unwillingly at the hands of ongoing colonial power, leaving oppression unexamined. Our reactions are not symptoms of personal failings but responses to a society that continually fails us. We must transform to understand and radically address the root causes of our pain.

Marginalisation of Indigenous Healing

Recent shifts in scientific thinking towards recognition of ‘social’ causes of health challenges overlook existing Indigenous perspectives on colonial causes of mental distress. Colonisation has brought with it an imposed and false concept of Western scientific superiority. Waves of genocide, assimilation, and cultural erasure have not only marginalised but also actively oppressed non-Eurocentric knowledge systems, labelling them as ‘other’, ‘alternative’, or ‘lacking in rigour and validity’. This biased view has invalidated centuries of Indigenous wisdom and healing practices, reducing them to footnotes in the dominant narrative of healthcare and causing irreparable harm to the mental health of Indigenous Peoples. Within this context, the Eurocentric biomedical model of mental healthcare falls significantly short, failing to address the myriad cultural, spiritual, and communal factors essential to the mental well-being of humanity itself. The societal structures around us – capitalism, the lingering poison of colonisation, systemic racism – are not just a backdrop; they are active contributors to our mental distress. However, Edward Said’s critique exposes a ‘mental Orientalism’ at play when attempts are made to find ‘alternative’ mental health models. Indigenous practices are exoticised, ‘fetishized, decontextualised, commodified and repackaged for global markets by white brokers’, further eroding cultural integrity.

A Call for Sovereignty

Therefore, despite the allure of Indigenous cultures as a simple ‘solution’ that can light the way towards a more promising horizon, we must be vigilant against exoticising Indigenous and non-European approaches to mental health. This involves moving beyond seeing these approaches as merely ‘alternative’ or ‘exotic’ and instead recognising them as legitimate and complex systems in their own right that can, and should, guide Indigenous health, well-being, and healing. This is where Chelsea Watego’s notions of sovereignty challenge the complacency bred by placing hope in failing systems, advocating for a reclamation of our right to define wellness on our terms. Sovereignty empowers our communities to define our own health practices, grounded in centuries of wisdom and understanding.

Reimagining Well-Being

We must extricate ourselves from the false promises of homogenous colonial capitalist ideas of mental health. To achieve this effectively, we must understand and contextualise Indigenous and non-European mental health practices within their own cultural, historical, and social frameworks. This contextualised, holistic view of well-being offers not just alternatives but also necessary corrections to the narrow biomedical model. At the heart of this is human connection – the powerful healing that comes from community, from knowing we are not alone, and from cultural practices that bind us to our respective histories and identities. Change must recognise that cultural practices are not static but dynamic and evolving. Recognising the context of capitalism while simultaneously respecting values inherent to Indigenous beliefs, we can see ourselves as more than cogs in a productivity machine; we need space to breathe, to heal, and to connect with our roots. We need to be. 
 
We are done being polite. Decolonising mental health is not a gentle reform; it is a radical overhaul, both personal and systemic. It is about dismantling systems that silence and oppress us and about building a future in which sovereignty, cultural practices, and holistic well-being, as defined on our terms, are at the forefront. But don’t be misdirected further. Although this pursuit of overhaul sits with us as we unwillingly tread water in the ongoing colonial oppression, the responsibility can and must fall on the complicit colonial society. This reminds us of Tuck and Yang’s arguments about ‘settler moves to innocence’, highlighting the cognitive dissonance in non-Indigenous societies that fail to confront their complicity in these ongoing injustices. 

In a world often dominated by noise, complexity, an endless pursuit of more, and increasing disconnection, we must return to the simple yet profound ideas of connection, kindness, and caring for both the earth and each other. These might sound like simple ideas, maybe even fluffy, but in the context we find ourselves, this shift in priorities demonstrates a radical reimagining of our future.

Cite this Article View all References

references

  • Australian Electoral Commission. ‘2023 Federal Referendum.’ 2023 Federal Referendum, 2023, www.aec.gov.au/Elections/referendums/2023.html.
  • Biddle, Nicholas, et al. Detailed Analysis of the 2023 Voice to Parliament Referendum and Related Social and Political Attitudes. The ANU Centre for Social Research and Methods, 2023, csrm.cass.anu.edu.au/sites/default/files/docs/2023/11/Detailed_analysis_of_the_2023_Voice_to_Parliament_Referendum_and_related_social_and_political_attitudes.pdf.
  • Gallagher, Kevin. ‘Psychiatrists Call for Transition to Social Rather Than Biological Treatments.’ Mad in America, 8 December 2023.
  • Murrup-Stewart, Cammi, et al. ‘“Connection to Culture Is Like a Massive Lifeline”: Yarning with Aboriginal Young People About Culture and Social and Emotional Wellbeing.’ Qualitative Health Research, vol. 31, no. 10, 2021, pp. 1,833–46. doi.org/10.1177/10497323211009475.
  • Said, Edward W. Orientalism. 1st ed., Pantheon Books, 1978.
  • Hart, Akiko, et al. ‘Critical Mental Health and the Allure of Orientalism.’ The Polyphony, 2022, thepolyphony.org/2022/12/05/critical-mental-health-orientalism/.
  • Watego, Chelsea. Another Day in the Colony. St Lucia, Queensland: University of Queensland Press, 2021.
  • Tuck, Eve, and K. Wayne Yang. ‘Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor’. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, vol. 1, no. 1, 2012, pp. 1–40.

Cite

SHARE THIS ARTICLE

R : Enough Politeness: Decolonising Mental Health in a Society Oblivious to Its Colonial Wounds

SHARE THIS ARTICLE