"The Problem Isn't Yourself Overcoming, It's Other People Overcoming You": A Decolonizing Global Mental Health Disability Studies in Education Curricular Cripstemology Reading

• In Event: "What's Disability Got to Do With It?" Social Contexts of Education and Its Intersectionalities

Abstract

This presentation focuses on the voices and emotion-and-identity-laden talk of students with intersectional dis/abilities and their meaning-feeling making. We bring together 2 case studies to interrogate the intersectional experiences of historically marginalized youth at the intersections of power and identity from a decolonizing mental health disability studies in education (DSE) cripstemology approach. Through our analysis, we purport to ask the following questions: 1) How do schools create a normalized meaning of mental health? 2) How are those normalized processes gendered and racialized? Specifically, we analyzed how US schools create normalized meanings of mental health. Daniel was a 1st-generation Mexican American to the United States, bilingual in both Spanish and English, and was labeled with a learning disability and a speech and language impairment. Daniel was born in Pinole, a southwestern major urban city and was in the 8th grade. Luna, a 16-year-old 10th-grader who lived at home with his mother and his stepfather and identifies as an Arab American, was on an individual education program for his disabilities including mild cerebral palsy, apraxia, and dysarthria. Luna identified as a pansexual and transgender individual and experiences depression and suicide ideation. There were similarities and differences between both of their experiences related to intersectional disability oppressions that were interpersonal and institutional, their identity processes inside and outside school contexts tied to their ethnicities, language use, sexuality, and both of their experiences with colonial mental health hegemony. Our decolonizing mental health DSE curricular cripstemology framework created new knowledge for theory, research, and praxis within U.S. schools.

Authors

• David Isaac Hernandez-Saca, University of Northern Iowa

• Laurie Gutmann Kahn, Moravian College