Society for the Study of Psychiatry and Culture
There are presently no open calls for submissions.
Borders, Barriers, and Belonging: Cultural Psychiatry & Global Mental Health in a Time of Displacement and Division
The Society for the Study of Psychiatry and Culture (SSPC) invites proposals for our upcoming Annual Meeting under the theme "Borders, Barriers, and Belonging: Cultural Psychiatry & Global Mental Health in a Time of Displacement and Division," exploring the political, geographic, and psychological boundaries shaping mental health today.
As forced migration, statelessness, political polarization, and rising nationalism fracture lives and communities, cultural psychiatry must grapple with lived experiences of exclusion, liminality, and identity formation. We welcome submissions that explore how clinicians, educators, researchers, communities, and systems navigate the fault lines of displacement, social rupture, and belonging, and how healing and solidarity can be cultivated across them.
We encourage submissions that reflect interdisciplinary, practice-based, and research-driven perspectives from around the world.
Meeting Subthemes:
In addition to the main theme, we especially invite submissions that align with the following subtopics, among other topics:
Structures of Belonging: Mental Health Across Families, Communities, and Systems
This subtheme explores how a sense of belonging and social well-being is shaped and at times challenged by family ties, community networks, national & immigration policies, and global systems. We invite submissions that examine stigma, discrimination, task-sharing approaches, and workforce development (including task shifting and task sharing) in global mental health. We especially welcome work that highlights culturally grounded strategies to improve access, fairness, and connection for underserved groups across diverse settings
Families Across the Lifespan: Cultural Family Therapy in Transnational Contexts
Building on cultural family therapy models, this subtheme explores intergenerational narratives, culturally grounded caregiving practices, and community-based interventions that support resilience among immigrant, refugee, and transnational families. We especially welcome work focused on motherhood, infant attachment, elder care, and the impact of structural and systemic challenges (e.g., acculturation stress).
Transcending Symptoms & Suffering: Psychosis, Spirituality, and Collective Healing
How are extraordinary experiences (such as psychotic symptoms, spiritual visions, or culturally specific idioms of distress) interpreted, managed, and integrated across diverse cultural and clinical contexts? Submissions that consider how resilience and resistance emerge in response to structural adversity, marginalization, and biomedical dominance–as well submissions that examine community-driven healing, spiritual frameworks, and culturally attuned responses that reframe mental suffering as both personal and political–are welcome.
Preferred Modalities of Healing & Inner Journeys: Culture, Care and Consciousness
What happens when migration intersects with altered states of consciousness and diverse healing traditions? We seek contributions that examine how individuals and communities navigate inner transformation through culturally meaningful practices, focused on trauma recovery and indigenous and spiritual healing. Submissions may also examine experiences with altered states of consciousness, including but not limited to psychedelic-assisted therapies, within culturally grounded care.
Innovative Assessment Tools and Approaches
We invite studies of approaches and tools that highlight assessment and understanding of culturally specific illness and wellness. Examples may include the Explanatory Model Interview Catalogue (EMIC), the DSM-5-TR Cultural Formulation Interview, Narrative Medicine, the Mental Health Gap Action Programme (mhGAP), or other innovations.
Digital Minds, Disembodied Selves: Rethinking Culture and Mental Health Care in the Age of AI
As AI and the digital technologies rapidly reshape mental health care, how must cultural psychiatry respond to changing notions of presence, personhood, human connection, and care? We welcome submissions exploring digital mental health interventions, virtual and hybrid identities, and the psychosocial impact of hyperconnectivity in diverse cultural contexts.