GMH Seminar Dörte Bemme 3 December 2015

We are pleased to invite you to:

The Institute of Health and Wellbeing present Global Mental Health seminar

Title: The re-configuration of 'Mental Health' into a global object of care

Presenter: Dörte Bemme

Date: Thursday 3 December 2015

Time: 12.30pm

Venue: Sir Charles Wilson Seminar Room A/B, 1 University Ave G12 8NN

Chair: Dr Ross White

Abstract:

Global Mental Health (GMH) has emerged as a novel field of knowledge and practice that seeks to address mental disorders on a ‘global’ scale. This talk argues that an analysis of GMH informed by an ‘anthropology of knowledge’ may open up engagements beyond a ‘cultural’ or ‘local’ framework. Furthermore, close empirical attention to the shifting conceptual architecture of GMH may yield surprising insights. The talk will explore two such shifts in the problematization of mental health: 1) From the search for an underlying ‘nature’ of mental illnesses to the procedural validation of ‘evidence’, and 2) To a new emphasis on ‘active ingredients’ in complex interventions that allow for the disaggregation and re-assemblage of mental health knowledge across difference and contexts.

About the Speaker:

Dörte Bemmeis a PhD candidate at McGill University. Her research involves multi-sited fieldwork within the institutional assemblage of Global Mental Health, investigating how GMH re-configures the knowledges and practices that define what a ‘mental health’ problem is and how it can be operationalized in practice.