Elisa Lacerda-Vandenborn - How Western Psychology Can Rip Indigenous Families Apart
Mad in America: Rethinking Mental Health
Mad in America
4.7 • 213 Ratings
🗓️ 17 November 2021
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Elisa Lacerda-Vandenborn is a professor at Werklund School of Education at the University of Calgary, Canada. She is currently part of several national and international research projects examining education in indigenous communities and the decolonization of mental health. Her writings explore alternate ways of understanding human suffering, challenge the dominant psychiatric worldview, and critique the Euro-American understandings of distress and disease.
Her interests include understanding different ideas of self, especially in indigenous communities, and how our ignorance about these differences harms people we say we are healing.
Lacerda-Vandenborn notes that "Psychology is not a very reflective discipline." This is a conversation about lost indigenous children, psychology's blind spots, and how we can address these concerns with epistemic humility.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Mad in America podcast, your source for science, psychiatry, and social justice. |
| 0:13.8 | Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Mad in America podcast. This is Ayurdi Dhar, your host for today. |
| 0:20.1 | My search for different ways of understanding |
| 0:22.3 | human suffering and health, ways that challenge the dominant psychiatric worldview and the |
| 0:27.6 | Euro-American understandings of distress and disease have brought me to the writings of Dr. Elisa |
| 0:33.8 | Lasserda Vandenborn. Dr. Vandenborn is a professor at the University of Calgary, and she's currently part of several |
| 0:41.3 | large national and international research projects. |
| 0:44.3 | These projects are examining education in indigenous communities and decolonization of mental health. |
| 0:50.3 | Her interests include understanding different ideas of self, especially in indigenous communities. |
| 0:57.8 | So Dr. Vandenmore, welcome to Matt in America. Thank you so much, Dr. Dar. It's a pleasure |
| 1:04.3 | to be here. I have had the opportunity to listen to many of this podcast. So it is a privilege to be here. Thank you. |
| 1:13.0 | And if I may, I would like to start, as we say it, the right way. And with a proper and territorial |
| 1:22.2 | acknowledgement of where I am. I'm currently in Calgary, which the indigenous name is actually Mokinces. |
| 1:30.2 | And Mokinces is where I live, I work, I get to do, I get to connect with people, and I'm doing |
| 1:37.6 | so in the traditional territories of the people of 3d7 region in southern Alberta. That includes the Blackfield Confederacy of the Siksika, of the Bikani and the Kainai |
| 1:49.4 | First Nations, also of the Sotina First Nations and the Stony Nakota, which includes the |
| 1:56.1 | Cheneke, the Bearspa, and the Wesley First Nations. |
| 1:59.9 | Mokinces is also the homeland of the Métis Nation of Alberta Region 3. |
| 2:05.5 | Thank you. |
| 2:06.1 | Thank you for acknowledging that. |
| 2:08.4 | And your work, a lot of it is in decolonization of mental health. |
| 2:13.7 | So could you very briefly kind of tell us what does that mean? |
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