This book explores diasporic identities and lived experiences that emerge in global patterns of oppression and considers the consequences of treatment and cure when patients experience mental illness due to war, displacement and surveillance. Going beyond psychiatric institutions and conventional psychiatric knowledge by focusing on informal networks, socially contingent value systems, and cultural sites of healing, this book considers how communities utilize trauma productively for healing. The chapters in this volume consider the detection of mental illness and its treatment through claims to citizenship and belonging as well as denials of social identity and psychic experiences by institutions of the state. A multidisciplinary team of contributors and international range of case studies explore topics such as colonial trauma, feminized trauma, reproductive violence, military mental health and more.

This book is an essential resource for psychologists, psychiatrists, political scientists, sociologists and anthropologists, as well as scholars and those involved in policymaking and practice.