Decolonising our minds: what UK psychiatry needs to (un)learn

Abstract

The dominance of Western orthodox models of psychiatry has led to colonisation of the mind and marginalisation of diverse cultural conceptualisations of distress and forms of caring. Compounded by a crisis of care and chronic underfunding, this has also diminished our practice here in the UK. This article probes the biases that UK psychiatry must unlearn and what lessons it can learn from decolonising praxes originating in the Global South. This is a call to action. We must transform our mindsets and advocate for contextualised, collective, integrative and socially just mental healthcare in the UK.

Keywords

• Transcultural psychiatry
• decolonising mental health
• social, political and economic determinants of mental health
• collective responsibility and social justice
• contextualised care.