Telepsychology

2022 ◽  
pp. 320-333
Author(s):  
Siddhi Jain

Telepsychology, until recently, was slow-moving and half-heartedly acknowledged in the mental health profession. There is increasing scholarly discourse on the digital therapeutic space. This shift to a digital paradigm means re-evaluating the profession's identity. This chapter considers telepsychology in relation to social justice. It highlights access for underserved groups and the digital divide that limits a substantial population from accessing online services. It identifies the need to integrate telepsychology in community psychology interventions, a significant framework to challenge systemic inequalities in mental health. It outlines the inadequacy of the profession to support needs of diversity in the field and considers if telehealth is one way to bring a shift in the homogenous identity of the profession. Telepsychology has the potential to amplify adherence to social justice principles; however, this requires evolved responses on individual, institutional, and systemic levels to bring unconventional but substantial changes in training, research, and regulatory guidelines.

Author(s):  
Laura Y. Cabrera

The ways in which humans relate to their environments have been studied from different perspectives, including ethics, sociology, behavioral sciences, and genetics. This chapter discusses an emerging approach within neuroethics—environmental neuroethics—that focuses on ethical and social implications of environmental influences on brain health and mental health. It begins with an overview of different disciplinary approaches to examine the relationship between the environment and human health and follows with a discussion of environmental effects on brain and mental health. It then argues for the importance of generating normative discussion about related issues, particularly because these matters are of global concern with linked social justice implications. This section also lays the foundations for the first generation of environmental neuroethics. The chapter concludes with key questions and challenges ahead for environmental neuroethics.


Somatechnics ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 291-309
Author(s):  
Francis Russell

This paper looks to make a contribution to the critical project of psychiatrist Joanna Moncrieff, by elucidating her account of ‘drug-centred’ psychiatry, and its relation to critical and cultural theory. Moncrieff's ‘drug-centred’ approach to psychiatry challenges the dominant view of mental illness, and psychopharmacology, as necessitating a strictly biological ontology. Against the mainstream view that mental illnesses have biological causes, and that medications like ‘anti-depressants’ target specific biological abnormalities, Moncrieff looks to connect pharmacotherapy for mental illness to human experience, and to issues of social justice and emancipation. However, Moncrieff's project is complicated by her framing of psychopharmacological politics in classical Marxist notions of ideology and false consciousness. Accordingly, she articulates a political project that would open up psychiatry to the subjugated knowledge of mental health sufferers, whilst also characterising those sufferers as beholden to ideology, and as being effectively without knowledge. Accordingly, in order to contribute to Moncrieff's project, and to help introduce her work to a broader humanities readership, this paper elucidates her account of ‘drug-centred psychiatry’, whilst also connecting her critique of biopsychiatry to notions of biologism, biopolitics, and bio-citizenship. This is done in order to re-describe the subject of mental health discourse, so as to better reveal their capacities and agency. As a result, this paper contends that, once reframed, Moncrieff's work helps us to see value in attending to human experience when considering pharmacotherapy for mental illness.


2021 ◽  
pp. 104973152110109
Author(s):  
Marjorie Johnstone

This article examines how mental health social work practice can move outside the hegemony of the medical model using approaches that honor the centering of social justice. By using the philosophical analysis of epistemic injustice and the ethics of knowing, I move out of the traditional psychiatric and psychological conceptual frameworks and discuss new guiding principles for practice. In the context of the radical tradition in social work and the impetus to blend theory with practice, I consider the use of narrative and anti-oppressive approaches to center social justice principles in individual dyadic work as well as in wider systems family and community work and policy advocacy. I evaluate these approaches through the principles of epistemic justice and discuss the importance of a relational collaborative approach where honoring the client and exploring lived experience are central to both the concepts of testimonial justice, hermeneutic justice and anti-oppressive practice.


BJPsych Open ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (6) ◽  
pp. 346-352 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Cecilia Menegatti-Chequini ◽  
Juliane P.B. Gonçalves ◽  
Frederico C. Leão ◽  
Mario F. P. Peres ◽  
Homero Vallada

BackgroundAlthough there is evidence of a relationship between religion/ spirituality and mental health, it remains unclear how Brazilian psychiatrists deal with the religion/spirituality of their patients.AimsTo explore whether Brazilian psychiatrists enquire about religion/spirituality in their practice and whether their own beliefs influence their work.MethodFour hundred and eighty-four Brazilian psychiatrists completed a cross-sectional survey on religion/spirituality and clinical practice.ResultsMost psychiatrists had a religious affiliation (67.4%) but more than half of the 484 participants (55.5%) did not usually enquire about patients' religion/spirituality. The most common reasons for not assessing patients' religion/spirituality were ‘being afraid of exceeding the role of a doctor’ (30.2%) and ‘lack of training’ (22.3%).ConclusionsVery religious/spiritual psychiatrists were the most likely to ask about their patients' religion/spirituality. Training in how to deal with a patient's religiosity might help psychiatrists to develop better patient rapport and may contribute to the patient's quicker recovery.


Author(s):  
Sarah A. Adjekum ◽  
Ameil J. Joseph

This article is concerned with the employment of pathologising discourses of mental health and trauma by the mainstream media as they pertain to the treatment of migrants in detention in Canada. Using critical discourse analysis, this research contrasts mainstream media coverage of four major publications on immigration detention. It explores the media’s role in the (re)creation of refugee discourse, and as a purveyor of racial ideology, which problematises people of colour and demands state intervention in the form of mental health aid. The resulting discourse pathologises the refugee identity and simultaneously obscures the socio-political conditions and violence that necessitates their departure from their home countries. As refugee discourse is infused with biomedical understandings of mental health, it also legitimises the nation state’s practice of coercive social control for these populations through detention.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document