Collective Poetry Making in the Poesis of Psychohistoriographic Cultural Therapy

Psychohistoriographic Cultural Therapy (PCT), pioneered in Jamaica in 1978, is a post-colonial model of group psychotherapy that privileges the use of the poetic to heal historical traumas. Embedded in PCT is a technique of collective poetry making. In this paper, the process is chronicled in five case studies: Madnificent Irations at the Bellevue Mental Hospital (Jamaica); Rethinking Cultural Diversity at the Cooperative Association of States for Scholarship (Georgetown University, Washington); Windows for Wavelengths at the Maudsley Hospital (London, UK); Identity and Achievement at the Afro-Caribbean Mental Health Centre (Wolverhampton, UK); and Mite de La Laine at the McGill University, (Montreal, Canada). An analysis of the PCT process and the collaborative poems created highlights how this model accelerates insight and resilience, confronts stigma, and facilitates rehabilitation and productivity.

Non-Haredi Arts Therapists’ Perceptions of Therapy With Ultra-Orthodox Children

Studies have underscored the complexity of the encounter between ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) society and psychotherapy, as well as the challenges involved in developing a therapeutic relationship in cross-cultural therapy. However, there is scant research on therapy for ultra-Orthodox children, especially when it comes to arts therapies that take place in a cross-cultural setting. The current study examined the perceptions of 17 arts therapists (including visual art therapists, dance/movement therapists, psychodramatists, music therapists and bibliotherapists) who are not ultra-Orthodox, and who currently work or have previously worked with ultra-Orthodox children. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the therapists and analyzed using the principles of Consensual Qualitative Research. The study covered four domains: (1) perceptions of the significance and objectives of arts therapy with ultra-Orthodox children; (2) the influence of the cultural difference between therapist and client on the emotional experience and the therapeutic relationship; (3) the use of arts in therapy; (4) systemic aspects. The findings indicate significant perceptual and value-based disparities between therapists and clients, which pose difficulties and challenges to all participating parties and require therapists to be highly sensitive. Aside from the difficulties, the findings suggest that this cultural difference may also have certain advantages for clients as well as therapists. The findings likewise attest to the multifaceted process of change that is taking place within Haredi society in its attitude toward psychotherapy in general and arts therapy in particular.

Owning our madness: Contributions of Jamaican psychiatry to decolonizing Global Mental Health

The contentious debate on evidence-based Global Mental Health care is challenged by the primary mental health program of Jamaica. Political independence in 1962 ushered in the postcolonial Jamaican Government and the deinstitutionalization of the country’s only mental hospital along with a plethora of mental health public policy innovations. The training locally of mental health professionals catalyzed institutional change. The mental health challenge for descendants of African people enslaved in Jamaica is to reverse the psychological impact of 500 years of European racism and colonial oppression and create a blueprint for the decolonization of GMH. The core innovations were the gradual downsizing and dismantling of the colonial mental hospital and the establishment of a novel community mental health initiative. The successful management of acute psychosis in open medical wards of general hospitals and a Diversion at the Point of Arrest Programme (DAPA) resulted in the reduction of stigma and the assimilation of mental health care into medicine in Jamaica. Successful decentralization has led to unmasking underlying social psychopathology and the subsequent development of primary prevention therapeutic programs based on psychohistoriographic cultural therapy and the Dream-A-World Cultural Therapy interventions. The Jamaican experience suggests that diversity in GMH must be approached not simply as a demographic fact but with postcolonial strategies that counter the historical legacy of structural violence.