Responding to numerous calls for decolonizing psychology, this training teaches therapists and clinical psychologists how to practice through a decolonizing lens. After covering foundations of decolonization, we offer practical tools clinicians can use in their therapeutic practice to unearth their Euro-centric assumptions, recognize the coloniality in Psy-disciplines, and engender skills and use methods that will allow them to work with Global South populations and diaspora without indulging in oppressive and harmful practices.
Details & Schedule
The extensive workshop has 4 sub-modules, and will be held over 10 sessions:
1) Module 1: Foundations of Decolonizing Psychotherapy
Trainer: Ayurdhi Dhar, PhD
Date & Time: Sep 28; 9 AM EST
a. What is decolonization and why we need it in clinical practice?
b. Basics of decolonization of Psychology – questioning received knowledge.
c. Colonial Assumptions in psychotherapy – in both Global North and South, and across different types of therapeutic orientations.
d. Consequences of coloniality: examples of colonial harm due to Psychology.
e. Cases of colonial harm in clinical settings.
f. Brief overview of how other sub-modules tackle these problems.
2) Module 2: Trauma as a Socio-Political Experience: Art-based community interventions
Trainer: Sugandh Dixit, PhD
Sub-module 1: Foundations: A Cultural and Community Lens to Trauma and Healing
Date & Time: Oct 5; 9 AM EST
a. Understanding the theory and background of art-based community intervention tools.
b. Learning about co-participation by undoing expert positions in trauma-inflicted communities, especially in the global south.
c. Learning how to work with space & physicality as a powerful anchor as trauma steals our sense of belonging and community.
Supervision: 1 hour on Oct 9, 9 AM EST; Learning assignments: 2 hours to be done in one’s own time
Sub-module 2: Clinical Tools and Skill-Sets: Art-based Community Interventions
Date & Time: Oct 12; 9 AM EST
a. Learning the following methods: photovoice, child map, ensemble maps, murals, and tree of roots
b. Working on cases and examples using the above stated methods.
Supervision and discussion: 1 hour, Oct 12; 11.20 AM EST
3) Module 3: Religion and Spirituality in Clinical Practice: Colonial Biases and a Way Forward
Trainer: Yousuf Raza, MD
Sub-module 1: Foundations: Anti-Religion Bias in Psychology
Date & Time: Oct 19; 9 AM EST
a. What is the colonial essence in therapy’s the anti-religion and anti-spirituality bias?
b. Identifying the anti-religious bias in Psychology.
c. Cultural competence and beyond: How this bias alienates global south populations and people of color.
d. Learning the method ‘Critical Discourse Analysis’ to evaluate Psychology’s approach to religion.
e. Decolonizing knowledge: Understanding how Psychology’s hegemonic knowledge acts as a form of religion.
Supervision: 1 hour on Oct 23, 9 AM EST; Learning assignments: 2 hours to be done in one’s own time
Sub-module 2: Clinical Tools and Skill-Sets: Integrating Religious Perspectives in your Practice
Date & Time: Oct 26; 9 AM EST
a. Psychotherapeutic benefit of religion – Understanding the priorities and needs of the cultures in global south.
b. Workshopping case studies and clinical examples.
c. Psychological harms in religious application.
Supervision and discussion: 1 hour, Oct 26, 11.20 AM EST
4) Module 4: Nazar. A pervasive Global South Experience: Decolonizing the Gaze in Clinical Practice
Trainer: Kimberly Lacroix, Mental Health Practitioner
Sub-module 1: Foundations: Recognizing the presence of Nazar in your Practice
Date & Time: Nov 9; 8 AM EST
a. What is Nazar (loosely translated to evil eye)? It’s high prevalence across the global south.
b. Identifying Nazar as a cultural phenomenon embodying multiple experiences.
c. What happens and what to do when you encounter experiences clients attribute to Nazar?
d. Belief, distress, and the challenges of classification for therapists when they encounter Nazar in the clinic.
e. An overview of Nazar in speech acts and in visual practices in global south.
f. Decolonizing ‘evidence’ in evidence-based medicine.
Supervision: 1 hour on Nov 13, 9 AM EST; Learning assignments: 2 hours to be done in one’s own time
Sub-module 2: Clinical Tools and Skill-Sets: Exploring and Resolving the Tensions of Nazar in your Practice
Date & Time: Nov 16; 8 AM EST; 6.30 PM IST
a. Detailed case analysis; experiences from the clinic.
b. Working on a case study on Nazar in its relationship to panic and anxiety.
c. Lessons for the therapist: dealing with conflicts, language, translation, and decolonization.
d. Discussion with participants on alternate interpretations of Nazar.
Supervision and discussion: 1 hour, Nov 16, 11.20 AM EST
When you join live you get:
Live Q&A sessions with the trainer.
Ability to connect with other like-minded professionals.
Real-time feedback.
Can’t make it live?
The recording for the event will be available on Teachable for you to view at any point.
About Mad in South Asia
Mad in South Asia (MISA) is an ally and affiliate of the international publication Mad in America. We showcase the experience of the users of mental health services in South Asia, in all of its complexity and diversity. We believe that people suffering with mental distress understand their own experience better than anyone else. We know that people in South Asian societies and cultures have vastly different experiences than those in the Global North or the Western Nations. Often fields such as mainstream Psychology and Psychiatry fail to understand these differences. South Asian experience is often absorbed by that of the South Asian diaspora in the West, who seem to speak for us without ever knowing us. We know that things that hurt and harm us are often different than what global Psychology considers harmful. We know that our reactions to many life events are different from what is portrayed as universally damaging. We know that what helps, treats, and heals us is often not found in psychology and psychiatry textbooks. At MISA, we challenge any understanding of South Asian people that is acontextual, arrogant, and deaf to the actual experience of people they are supposed to help.
About Your Trainers:
Ayurdhi Dhar, PhD is the founder of Mad in South Asia and the author of Madness and Subjectivity: A Cross-Cultural Examination of Psychosis in the West and India. Her academic training is from the US, and clinical experience from India. Her scholarship is in the field of culture and psychopathology, decolonizing psychology, global mental health movement, and feminist psychology.
Sugandh Dixit, PhD is a clinical psychologist with philosophical roots that move away from “fixing” the individual to acknowledging the impact of layered intrapsychic, interpersonal, and socio-cultural factors on our well-being. She has trained teams at various organizations (Sakhi for South Asian Women, New York, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, Pace University York, Bapu Trust, Pune, Kashmir Life Line, Srinagar) on topics such as community-centric trauma work, inclusion & diversity, social identities, and psychopathology and role of disadvantages, to name a few. She is presently in private practice in New Delhi and provides training to clinicians on active integration of the social lens of trauma and from a relational psychodynamic lens. She is also co-founder of Mad in South Asia, an organization working against the pathologization of mental health concerns, and bringing forth voices of lived experiences.
Kimberly Lacroix is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist based out of India. Her research work is in the area of investigating post-colonial subjectivity and subject formation in India. She has worked as a researcher towards integrating mental health within primary health care systems in rural India, and also as an implementer of a community mental health and deinstitutionalization project linking the two programs. Over the last few years, she has returned to full time clinical practice engaging closely with questions that emerge in and from the clinic.
Yousuf Raza, MD is a Consultant Psychiatrist & the Founder of Telepsych Pakistan. He is also pursuing his PhD and his dissertation looks to employ the thoughts of Muhammad Iqbal and Charles Peirce to reconstruct psychology for use in non-western populations. He has a background in Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy, pragmatism, psychoanalysis, and religious studies.
Frequently Asked Questions
Contact us: [email protected]