Orchestrating Mental Health Care and Belonging: A Haunted Endeavor

• In Event: The Haunted Curriculum: Engaging Present-Day Violence in the Education of Health Professional

Abstract

This exploratory study follows mental health professionals and learners who support the mental health needs of refugees and asylum seekers in France. Drawing on ethnographic research in four mental health clinics and interviews with 65 psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, graduate students in clinical psychology, and residents in psychiatry, I examine how mental health professionals and learners recognize and engage with the political, structural, cultural and spiritual dimensions of mental illness. Integrating performance studies, science and technology studies, and spectral studies, I unpack how these professionals and learners enact a therapeutic voice and vision that is attuned to the needs of patients and draws on these professionals’ and learners’ own identities and experiences. Orchestrating care is a process of harmonizing the diverse and often discrepant voices and visions among professionals and students. I contend that the orchestration of care is haunted since professionals and learners unpack how patients are afflicted by restrictive immigration policies, complex medical care trajectories, and even spiritual hauntings. Mental health professionals and learners themselves are not left unscathed since they may find their own experiences and identities are devalued or instrumentalized in the orchestration of care.

Author

• David Ansari, University of Illinois at Chicago