Citation

Walker DE. Ethical Hum. Psychol. Psychiatry 2022; 24(1): 5-28.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, Springer Publishing Company)

DOI

10.1891/EHPP-2021-0008

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Sociohistorical analysis of four words commonly used in the language of Western mental health, Indigenous intelligence disorder, and depression reveal a "Domination Code" masking past and present professional complicity of the U.S. and global mental health system in the oppression of Indigenous peoples. A historicity is offered of concepts of inferior Indigenous intelligence and current pseudoscientific ideologies within Western biological psychiatry dominating WHO's mhGAP (Mental Health Gap Action Programme) exported to these communities. mhGAP's cultural hegemony is achieved through Western mental health ideologies that decontextualize, depoliticize, minimize, and marginalize the lived experience of cultural oppression on health and wellbeing. This program appears to violate the spirit of Article 23 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous people. © Copyright 2022 Springer Publishing Company, LLC.

Language: en

Keywords

human; mental health; suicide; WHO; World Health Organization; depression; Native American; wellbeing; indigenous people; psychology; Indigenous; death; mental disease; American Indian; Article; eugenics; aboriginal; behavioral health; Amnesty International; first nations; liberation psychology; Mental Health Gap Programme; mhGAP