Division of Social & Transcultural Psychiatry, 91社区
Advanced Study Institute in Cultural Psychiatry
The Future of Cultural Psychiatry: Virtuality, Imagination, and Community
June 26 - 28, 2024
Montreal, Qu茅bec
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Advanced Study Institute Conference and Workshop (June 26 - 28, 2024)
A congeries of new technologies are remaking the human body, mind and ecological niche, confronting us with new challenges and predicaments鈥攁nd new ways of being. Gene-editing and other biotechnologies, the accelerated and dense connectivity of the internet, and virtual reality each offer us new kinds of mobility and mutability. The use of information and communication technologies to deliver mental health care and the applications of big data, machine learning and AI are changing the nature of the clinical encounter. These technologies open onto unfamiliar landscapes and identities that have been termed 鈥減osthuman鈥�. The posthuman may be a throwing off of parochial anthropocentric blinders, and a welcoming of other-than human beings into our worlds. But it may also portend a loss of human community, historical continuity, cherished values and moral compass. All of this occurs in the context of accelerating degradation and breakdown of the global ecosystem on which our survival depends. This conference will explore the impact of these disruptive changes in remaking our sense of what it is to be human and of the prospects and pathologies of emerging forms of life and community. An interdisciplinary group of scholars from cultural psychiatry, anthropology, sociology, philosophy and literature will address questions at the intersection of cultural studies and mental health, including (1) How are new technologies remaking our minds, bodies, cultures, and communities? (2) What new pathologies arise from the predicaments created by these changes? (3) How can cultural psychiatry respond to these challenges through innovations in clinical practice, mental health promotion, and advocacy?
The format will be a 2-day Workshop (June 26 & 27) for researchers working on these issues, with intensive discussion of pre-circulated papers unpublished by participants. A public Conference (June 28) directed to mental health practitioners, researchers, and students will include selected workshop presentations and panel discussions as well as a poster session. After peer review, selected papers will be published in a thematic issue of Transcultural Psychiatry.
Selected recordings and abstracts below:
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Laurence J. Kirmayer - Introduction: The Situated Brain
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Laurence J. Kirmayer - Posthuman Ecologies of Mind
A congeries of new technologies are remaking the human body, mind and ecological niche, confronting us with new challenges and predicaments鈥攁nd new ways of being. Gene-editing and other biotechnologies, the accelerated and dense connectivity of the internet, and virtual reality each offer us new kinds of mobility and mutability. The use of information and communication technologies to deliver mental health care and the applications of big data, machine learning and AI are changing the nature of the clinical encounter. These technologies open onto unfamiliar landscapes and identities that have been termed 鈥減osthuman鈥�. The posthuman may be a throwing off of parochial anthropocentric blinders, and a welcoming of other-than human beings into our worlds. But it may also portend a loss of human community, historical continuity, cherished values and moral compass. All of this occurs in the context of accelerating degradation and breakdown of the global ecosystem on which our survival depends. This conference will explore the impact of these disruptive changes in remaking our sense of what it is to be human and of the prospects and pathologies of emerging forms of life and community. An interdisciplinary group of scholars from cultural psychiatry, anthropology, sociology, philosophy and literature will address questions at the intersection of cultural studies and mental health, including (1) How are new technologies remaking our minds, bodies, cultures, and communities? (2) What new pathologies arise from the predicaments created by these changes? (3) How can cultural psychiatry respond to these challenges through innovations in clinical practice, mental health promotion, and advocacy?
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David Benrimoh - Computational Psychiatry: From Theory to Practice and Back Again
Psychiatric research is often conducted at different levels of abstraction- from the cellular to the societal levels. Unfortunately, there is a significant challenge in linking and translating these results between levels, and transforming them into actionable insights to improve treatment and prevention. The field of computational psychiatry was founded with the idea that computer models can be used as both sources of a common lexicon to help translate between levels, and to mobilize knowledge from multiple levels in order to improve patient outcomes. These models come in two major forms: explanatory and predictive models. Explanatory models use either data or simulated agents in order to elucidate the alterations in information processing underlying different psychiatric symptoms or disorders. These models can generate individualized parameter estimates which can serve to phenotype patients based on their information processing characteristics, and these parameters can be followed over time and correlated with both high-level (e.g. social, behavioral) and low-level (e.g. cellular, imaging-based) data. Predictive models generally offer less explanatory power, but can be used to predict patient outcomes- aiding in treatment personalization or risk stratification. In this talk, we will explore examples of both of these approaches as well as how they can be combined. In addition, we will discuss practical and ethical issues, taking an example of the design and testing of a artificial intelligence-enabled clinical decision support system.
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Kamaldeep Bhui -听Co-Pact: MHA and ethnicity research: police involvement
Ethnic inequalities in experiences and outcomes of severe mental illness are well known including the excess use of coercive care in racialised groups. The lack of progress suggests faulty paradigms of research, practice, and policy. Cultural psychiatry scholars have investigated the role of clinical assessment, cultural identity, acculturation, and culturally determined beliefs and behaviours. Less attention has been given to racism, structural barriers over the life-course, and even historical and institutional affordances that shape people鈥檚 lives. Furthermore, there is often resistance to proposed solutions from practitioners and policy makers, depending on salient political and social ideologies and popular models of mind. Broadening our gaze from a potentially over narrow bio-psycho-social-cultural deliberations anchored in the clinic, I outline the emerging findings of a photovoice study (Co-Pact) and learning on interdisciplinary, creative, research cognisant of eco-social and syndemic theories. In this photovoice study of ethnicity and mental health legislation, I share our learning on: (1) Coercive experiences and practices from patient and professional perspectives; (2) Epistemic injustice in research and practice; and (3) Psychopolitical transactions and resistance that must be overcome for progress.
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Roberto Lewis-Fern谩ndez - Incorporating Cultural Variation and Social Determinants of Health in Future DSMs
This presentation will discuss ongoing efforts to refine the integration of cultural and social structural contexts in psychiatric nosology. There is growing recognition that we need to decenter from the use of nomothetic diagnoses alone to a more comprehensive clinical formulation that includes assessing the impact of these elements in a person鈥檚 clinical picture. For example, understanding the typical cultural concepts of distress in a given setting is essential to fully understanding the person鈥檚 clinical picture. These revisions would combat reification by showing that symptom composition of disorders is not fixed, reducing the temptation to see them as 鈥渘atural kinds.鈥� However, this approach will reduce diagnostic reliability, since clinicians will have much more leeway to determine which symptoms fall under which domains. The lower reliability will particularly affect research efforts based on DSM diagnoses. This tradeoff seems unavoidable at our current stage of conceptual development in psychopathology research.
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Jeffrey G. Snodgrass - Harnessing the Therapeutic Potential of Avatar Identities
An avatar is an agent who serves as a vehicle or vessel for another鈥檚 consciousness and will. In spirit possession in India, mediums transform into avatars of divine will. In contemporary role-playing games, character-avatars do players鈥� bidding. Relevant to well-being in these two contexts is how avatar experiences can enhance feelings of moral agency. The spiritually possessed, infused with divine energy, bolster their felt capacity to achieve personally and socially meaningful goals. Likewise, role-players can enact in virtual worlds their best or ideal selves. Avatar experiences, then, have therapeutic potential: cultivating a second (magical) avatar identity can change how individuals feel and evaluate life, which can impact how they confront and manage stress-inducing threats and conflicts. In this talk, I think through the psychosocial parallels and divergences between avatar-related health processes in religious as compared to play contexts. This involves presenting key ideas from my recent book, The Avatar Faculty: Ecstatic Transformations in Religion and Video Games (University of California Press, 2023), while linking those arguments in new ways to my current focus on the health dynamics of tabletop role-playing games.
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