1: Introduction

A website about decolonisation must necessarily begin by considering colonisation — and here we refer mainly to the series of events that occurred after Columbus, sailing from Spain with three small ships, landed with his crew in Hispaniola, but also notes other events that amount to colonisation, such as the recent war that Israel is waging on Gaza.

Once they reached the ‘New World' in the 15th Century, the Spanish established a small colony with 39 people and returned to Spain with gold, spices and indigenous people held as captives. Hailed by the Spanish King and Queen as ‘admiral of the ocean sea,’ Columbus was empowered to supervise subsequent voyages across the Atlantic. It is likely that Columbus was the first European since the Vikings set up colonies in Greenland and Newfoundland in the tenth century (these still exist as colonies ruled by Denmark), to have set foot in what was hailed as the ‘New World. The result was an upheaval in this new world which amounted to a process of Europeans rom the old word occupying land and subjugating people who lived in the American continent and the Caribbean Islands — the term ‘stake-holder’ is derived from the stakes planted by foreign immigrants to claim ownership of local land. European Empires, some truly vast, soon emerged in the new world. But not just there but in Asia and Africa as well, expanding land already colonised. The result of all this was a total transformation of the socio-political-power ambience of the whole world and a lot else.

Having stolen land in the ‘new world,’ European colonisers cultivated it (as it later transpired to the detriment of a people-friendly ecologically balanced climate that existed) the stolen land of the Americas and the Caribbean islands forcing, when possible, local natives to do the hard work; and when this failed (many resisted to being enslaved) turning to imported enslaved Africans from Europe to provide much of the labour in the ‘new world’. The transatlantic Atlantic slave trade that developed was invariably in African natives with dark brown or black skin colour although the slave trade in the ‘old world’ (itself well established in many parts of Europe and non-European countries such as China and Korea) included enslavement of people from many parts of the world of many so-called ‘races.' So, the transatlantic slave trade was entirely of people seen in racial terms as Black, and so gave rise to the notion we inherit that slavery is of ‘Blacks’. This slave trade was soon taken over by English companies with slave ships, protected by the British Navy, pursuing what became the triangular journey between ports in Europe (e.g. Liverpool, Bristol), Africa (e. g. Ghana) and locations in the new world — taking slaves one way and bringing stolen goods and products (mainly sugar and cotton) to Europe. This race-based forced migration from Africa to the new world was the greatest mass migration the world had ever seen. The founding of the United States of America was imbued with racism from the very beginning.

The 15th century colonisation on an industrial scale had never before been seen but eerily — the same process is being repeated today by the newly formed state of Israel in its War on Gaza (a part of the state of Palestine that was legally governed by the UK) in its campaign to establish a state in the Middle-East that would be populated predominantly by Jewish people. (Prior to recent times, Palestine was legally a ‘protectorate,’ a sort of semi-colony, established by the League of Nations (fore-runner of the United Nations) and entrusted to the UK to bring to full nationhood — and it was not only for any one particular community or religious group. In fact, the movement to establish a Jews-only state became possible because the UK allowed a part of Palestine to be seized (illegally) after the end of WW2 by Jewish settlers who were not wanted as refugees in European countries — antisemitism being highly prevalent in Europe. What was unofficially established was a state called ‘Israel’. And now in the twenty-first century this Israel is busy colonising Palestine, evicting indigenous Palestinians — imitating what European countries did in the new world in the 15th Century. As happened in America, this means forcible occupation of land, driving Palestinians into what amounts to reservations, divide and rule tactics, illegal settlement in what amount to reservations and so on. Colonisation (in the 15th C) led to the cult of first class citizens (‘White supremacists’) ruling others. We see today the beginnings of such a system in Israeli-occupied Palestine (‘Occupied Territories’— OTs). And mimicking 15th century colonisation, Israel acquires much of the wealth in the territories it has occupied (the ‘occupied territories’ of the West Bank area) and exploits both the land and people living there.

The colonisers (of America) of the 15th Century fought amongst themselves for booty — piracy on the high seas of Spanish ships by the English became rampant (Francis Drake was one well known pirate at the time) — and later two world wars (WW1 and WW2) took place in the twentieth century (C-CE) when colonised people were recruited to fight and die in large numbers.

Slavery

In a landmark book first published in 1940, Orlando Patterson (1982), Professor of Sociology at Harvard University, set the history of slavery in a framework of power that individuals had over their own actions, ways and means whereby they may lose that power, and the numbers involved. The information quoted in this website is largely derived from Patterson’s book. It is noteworthy that trading in acquisition and transport of enslaved human beings was widespread in the world until medieval times — possibly much later in some countries — and thence into the 19th century (C-CE). Trade routes, slave markets and slave auctions existed around the Indian Ocean, the Black sea and Mediterranean, medieval Europe and the trans-Saharan countries, and thence was established the transatlantic slave trade (where significantly, Black and Brown skinned people were transported to America.

The ethnic origin of enslaved people who were bought and sold in the European slave markets, except it seems in the case of slaves for America, did not seem to matter to slave traders. For example, large numbers of Welsh and Irish people were traded and sold to slave traders operating slave markets in Iceland; the Vikings traded their fellow-Scandinavians as well as people from neighbouring countries for sale in France and Spain where many were again traded by Muslim and Jewish traders further south and east to Muslim states. Enslaved Africans had been sold in Ireland — probably the origin of so-called ‘blue-men’ described in Ireland in AD 859. The Viking trading of Slavs (an ethnic group in Eastern Europe) seems to have led to the common root for the word ‘slave’ in many European languages and its use in Arabic.

The Trans-Saharan slave trade dominated by Muslims was part of the increasing demand for African labour and goods from about 900 (C-CE), connecting with East African trade in slaves. At least 15 percent of the population of Western Europe in the year 950 (C-CE) were slaves (Patterson, p.157). The trade in slaves within Europe diminished as the transatlantic slave trade increased — the latter predominantly of enslaved men rather than women. Since it involved mainly English traders, it’s profits fed back into England. Throughout recorded history slave-trading systems, both informal and later recognised in systems of law, have been a part of what was considered to be the activity of civilised (sic) nations. This holds good for all regions of the world as far as we know, the most extreme being what came to be called ‘chattel slavery’ — people born to slaves or enslaved in various circumstances such as wars and then bought and sold as war-booty may be today —- like pots and pans it has been said. Patterson preferred to consider chattel slavery as just one type of slavery (others being enslavement for particular purposes or skills), but it is in the sense of chattel slavery that the term ‘slavery’ is thought of today. Patterson pointed out that ‘all the great early [European] centres of human civilization … [in] Spain, late Old English society, France, and Viking Europe’ had times when they had slavery of people bought or sold as chattels and that ‘the same holds true for Africa and certain areas of the Orient’ (Paterson, pp, vii-viii). However, it is a moot point as to whether (for example) women enslaved for the purpose of serving in hareems in the Middle-East or China or men enslaved for service in limited wars (and then released) were chattel slaves as such — i.e. released from slavery once they fulfilled the task.

Enslavement in the ‘old world’ was for various purposes — for example, in Sri Lanka the purpose included a form of forced servitude (Wickramasinghe, 2020). The concept of ‘human rights’ was virtually unknown to Europeans and probably to all people until the end of the 1939-1945 world war — and certainly not known in the colonial world. The type of slavery in the new world was always chattel-slavery, the slaves belonging to their masters from being born to slaves or from the time they were enslaved, liable to be bought and sold between masters. Other types of slavery prevalent in the old world were the enslavement of women for hareems or men trained in particular skills or for providing skilled workers in factories or farming or domestic work. Several nations in the old world, such as Greece, China and Egypt depended heavily on slavery. Slavery was the basis of socioeconomic structures of Ancient Greece and Rome.

The system of chattel slavery in the new world was often accompanied by random murder or killing of slaves after token trials — slaves not being considered as fully human in the way their owners were. It seems that people indigenous to South America (where the current residents are called Latinos), often resisted any form of slavery but then liable to be caught up in being killed without trials akin to genocide; but this sort of collective killing was rare in North America where a concentration camp approach was preferred for controlling indigenous people — restriction of people to reservations similar to concentration camps of the type established much later in South Africa by the then British rulers, and in central Europe by German Nazis.

It should be noted (merely in passing at this point) that socio-political and socio-psychological changes initiated by colonisation — the over-riding legacy of colonialism associated with institutional anti-black racism — may well have contributed to many of the social and political problems that we have today, for example so-called culture-wars and even climate change, but one thing we should recognise is that it was only during and after the colonial era that human beings came to see themselves primarily as belonging to different races. Slaves working on the plantations were often just referred to as ‘niggers’ or ‘blacks’: It was the colonial era that racialised slavery; indeed the concept of ‘race’ itself was poorly recognised in the old world world before the Atlantic slave trade. The groups of people in the old word who were discriminated against by Europeans in general were classified in cultural / religious terms as Jews or Muslims or other cultural minorities such as the Romany people (Gypsies). The colonial era was when racialisation, as we know it, became embedded in European cultures of the ‘new world’ — an approach that spread across the world (passing off as ‘Westernisation’ / Europeanisation’) in tow with Eurocentric accumulation of political power and wealth. It was coloniality (types of colonial thinking about the non-European) emanating from the colonisation of the new world that set new ways of thinking about human beings — based on perceived race. The economic and psychological corollaries of this played into the cult of white supremacy and ultimately a world where European countries became rich and others poor; leading to industrial era led by Britain, and thence subjugation of vast stretches of Africa and Asia. The most vivid accounts of European colonisation are discussed by Robert Gilda (2019) in Empires of the Mind and Caroline Elkins (2022) in Legacy of Violence.

Decolonisation is a term — a concept — that is widely talked about today, sometimes rather loosely as a peg on which to hang various changes people wish to see for a variety of reasons. We believe that grappling with identifying the ills of colonisation can be more easily handed if such a wide range is not discussed all at once. As with colonisation, decolonisation occurred in two waves. The first wave was in South America following the slave revolt of slaves in Haiti, the second affecting Asia and Africa after the end of the second world war (WW2) (Mignolo and Walsh, 2018). Strictly speaking, a limited decolonisation, political decolonisation, was a series of political changes that preceded decolonisation in a wider sense including for instance ‘decolonisation of the mind’ that is part of deconstructing coloniality, decoloniality, a term used to cover processes aimed at changing colonial thinking into modern was of thinking in keeping with racial justice in various settings where political decolonisation has had an impact. However the use of words / terminology has gradually changed in recent times. ‘Decolonisation’ as a term now tends to cover both (political) decolonisation and decoloniality in most discussions (as in this website). In other words, the term decolonisation is also now applied to a varieties of way in which various practices and ways of thinking can be changed for the better by focusing on all that happened during the colonial era — both political and ways of thinking and speaking (in, for example in the field of education and social systems like psychology and psychiatry) — as a sort of pathway to change.

The focus of www.decolpsych.com is not on issues to do with apologising for colonialism, institutional racism or reparations — although we would of course support calls for reparations and action against institutional racism. Our concern in this website (at least to start with) is with improving and redressing problems in current mental health practice shown to be institutionally racist and beset with coloniality, by creating a critical mental health system or several such systems, facing up to to what happened during colonialism. Hence, we have chosen to consider decolonisation of two subjects which have both academic and practical dimensions and are fundamental to the way mental health care is delivered in practice — namely psychology and psychiatry — both significantly with both practical and theoretical dimensions. We aim to tackle in a systematic way, the question of decolonising these two disciplines in order to improve mental health systems. And, we need to set up a framework for this process.

2. Why a website

The idea of a website such as the one we present here first arose during informal discussions in 2021 between some members of the Critical Psychiatry Network (CPN) in the UK. Suman Fernando, who had participated in the discussions, then explored English language literature on decolonisation with the intention of writing a book. But in mid-2022, Suman decided instead to adapt a personal Squarespace website that was being developed for his personal use into one about decolonisation; and he did so with the help of a longstanding colleague Hári Sewell former social worker and Ali Dolphin an expert on technical matters, and the advice of invited like-minded academics from Brazil, Canada, South Africa and the UK. The result is decolpsych.com.

Our studies of theory and practice of psychiatry and psychology and colonialism vis-a-vis psychology and psychiatry have shown us that the decolonisation of psychiatry and psychology could begin by focusing on (a) reclaiming knowledge and understandings of human beings that have been excluded during the development of the two disciplines because of Eurocentric white-supremacist thinking, cultural arrogance, institutional racism, colonial thinking (coloniality); and (b) instilling into the wider universally geared psychiatry and psychology a feel for social justice, antiracism, decoloniality and compassion as befits disciplines that are to do with human beings who generally live in communities.

We start by considering briefly, the history of colonialism and the context in which psychiatry and psychology developed in West European cultures during the 18th & 19th centuries; then provide platforms for written material and visual material that we need for working on with examples of such material, backed by discussion; and end by suggesting a framework for adapting systems of training psychiatrists and psychologists and professionals working in allied fields —- the ‘psy professions’. Our website decolpsych.com is the means we hope can be used for this project.

The decolpsych project

The aim of our project is to get something tangible and realistic together that could lead to a document that gets the show (of decolonising psychiatry and psychology) defined on the ground (as it were) in preparation for launching a statement on what decolonised psychiatry and psychology should be like, so that mental health systems that the disciplines underpin are clearly for the benefit of people now seen as ‘patients,’ ‘service users’ or ‘survivors’. We hasten to add that there is a large body of information and wisdom in the background literature on various aspects of decolonising already, but there appears to be a problem in moving forward in formulating a decolonised system that is practicable. The show we want to see is a workable scheme or set of schemes limited to decolonising what we see today as psychiatry and psychology and formulating training in these (decolonised) disciplines. So, our emphasis is on practicability and we dare to say on pragmatism. The practicability is about our aim to avoid getting bogged down in apparently interminable discussions (often of minutiae) that seem to afflict many other well-meaning discussions in the now numerous workstreams in various locations; and the pragmatism is about keeping our feet on the ground, mindful that the ultimate result is a mental health system that is suited both at a local level and a universal one.

How we see the future is that, once decolonised, what is understood and taught as ‘psychiatry’ and ‘psychology’ applicable to mental health would be woven into their systems (ways of working), ideologies (ways of thinking) and knowledge (academic expertise and wisdom) from as many cultures as possible representing a diversity not necessarily of skin-colours of people but of approaches to thinking about human beings both spiritually and bodily. It should be noted that the ‘criticality’ that gets embedded is something far different to (for example) the narrow anti-drug approach often voiced (as critiques) in the UK and other countries in the global North; in other words, the decolonised meaning of criticality is about the sort of thinking that reconciles scientific approaches with spirituality in a framework that is antiracist, anti-misogynist and overtly just and fair. We suggest that with such decolonisation, universally valid disciplines would emerge, ones that could be adapted for use anywhere in the world.

In our view, the elimination of coloniality (colonial thinking) would bring the disciplines of psychiatry and psychology into the modern world that calls for respect of people whatever their so-called ‘race’ ‘ethnicity’ and cultural background. The result (of decolonisation) would be refreshed and modernised disciplines that could promote mental health and the various disciplines and practices subsumed under the term ‘psy’ being in a framework that is antiracist, anti-misogynist, and true to social justice — a system for today’s world, for all cultures, for all people everywhere.

3. emergence of (Western) psychiatry & psychology

Massive colonisation (by European powers) of lands inhabited by non-Europeans took place for well nigh four hundred years ago from the early fifteenth century right up to the mid-twentieth century. Naturally, institutional racism and colonial thinking (coloniality) dominated the shaping of these colonies; and even more importantly, coloniality and institutional racism that have persisted in the cultures of the politically independent states that replaced the colonies from the mid twentieth century — one could see this as a legacy of colonialism, sometimes called ‘neo-colonialism’. The disciplines we know as psychiatry and psychology came about in tandem at the time of the (European) so-called ‘Enlightenment’ of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Christian era) at a time when institutional racism was the norm in Europe, the race-based Atlantic slave-trade was in full swing, and leaders of the cultural changes in Europe were unashamed racists. Institutional racism has become embedded in both psychiatry and clinical psychology from the beginning of their formation.

There is now considerable evidence that today’s psychiatry and psychology practiced in most parts of the world are no longer fit for purpose mainly because they do not make sense to most people either scientifically or culturally or in terms of social justice and mere common sense. The literature on ‘critical psychiatry’ and ‘critical psychology’ from Euro-American sources refer to critiques of today’s psychology and psychiatry as forms of ‘antipsychiatry’ and ‘anti-psychology’, but in reality such thinking gives the notion of critical thinking far too narrowly — an issue explored in the framework for decolonisation we describe. Additionally, we believe that the term ‘diversity’ is used too glibly in many discussions as being based on mere physical appearance of individuals — thus actually justifying current Eurocentricity, xenophobia and racism. And there is a lot else that is wrong in the disciplines taught as ‘psychiatry’ and ‘psychiatry’.

4. From transcultural psychiatry to decolonisation

Transcultural psychiatry (TCP) and cultural psychiatry (CP) were interests that developed in Canada in the 1950s at McGill University, Montreal, and were later taken up by transcultural / cultural societies in other parts of America and Western Europe in the 1960s. Originally (in Montreal) it covered ways in which people supposedly suffering ‘mental illness’ (as described in Western ways of thinking) were cared for or treated medically, latterly mainly with drugs. At first, the terms TCP and CP tended to be used as synonymous; but later, by the early 1990s, they became seen as two distinct (but overlapping ) spheres of interest. In discussions within the British Transcultural Psychiatry Society (TCPS-UK), an organisation that thrived between 1976 and late nineties and set the standard for what ‘transcultural psychiatry’ signifies, TCP was seen as fundamentally different to cultural psychiatry (CP) in that the concept of ‘race’ is as important (or more so) than ‘culture’ in denoting difference, especially in places where Eurocentric ideas of white supremacy played a significant role. In effect, TCPS-UK itself advocated an antiracist psychiatry rather than a purely culturally sensitive psychiatry (that CP tended to advocate and still does).

Today TCP differs basically from CP in that the former (TCP) questions, often rejects, culturally Western-style ways of identifying and diagnosing ‘illness’ as being valid irrespective of cultural context; while the latter (CP) accepts these although sometimes with (what is called) ‘cultural sensitivity’-- generally an illusive concept when it comes to applicability. In addition, the view in TCP is that racism is embedded in psychiatry and psychology to such as extent that not only are these disciplines insensitive to cultural diversity but they are institutionally racist in many ways.

It is becoming evident today that the field of history of mental health as a helping system for people with social-psychological trouble is changing. Although the words ‘psychiatry’ and ‘psychology’ are used in various types of agencies involved in both control of, and helping and supporting, people deemed to be suffering from psychological problems, these concepts are interpreted in terms of racial / cultural difference. Transcultural psychiatry (TCP) supports the view that psychiatry and psychology need careful revision to free them from colonial thinking (coloniality). In the past, much of the history of what in broad terms should be called ‘psychiatry’ and ‘psychology’ appears to have been reported in distorted fashion when it concerns non-Western cultures; this needs to change. Much of what had been going on in the field of mental health in the non-Western world (now roughly referred to as the ‘global South’) has been ignored or its history suppressed. In other words institutional racism appears to have influenced the writing of socio-cultural — and even some scientific — history generally since much of what has been preserved has been in European languages, mostly English (that has turned out to be the leading socially acceptable language and now the leading internet language.

The literature on institutional racism in psychiatry and psychology is well known but less known seems to be the literature on so-called ‘indigenous psychologies’ and ‘ethno-psychiatries.’ These should really be translated into decolonised language to be called ‘global psychologies’ and ‘global psychiatries’. Notwithstanding the importance of this field of study and the increasing disillusion with ‘Western psychiatry’, non-Western systems of psychiatry, clinical psychology and mental health systems, global psychologies and global psychiatries are still far from being taught in universities today as proper psychologies and psychiatries --- not even in non-European countries — although they are clearly (at least) options to Western psychology and psychiatry. Significantly, mental heath systems that existed (and still exist in under-resourced hybrid forms) in non-European settings often predate European models of such subjects.

In short, the noxious aspects of current psychiatry and psychology can be attributed to what happened during colonisation of non-European people by Europeans — the colonisation of knowledge production and of people’s minds. It is only in the past two or three decades that some academics have begun to see that there is a vast array of global psychologies and global psychiatries that are of non-European origin, the history of which has been ignored by historians. Books are now appearing that compare different systems of mental health and attempts to amalgamate them are being considered. But the opposition to such activity is sometimes so vicious that one begins to wonder whether colonialism has really ended or whether the world has merely moved from a colonial to a neo-colonial era. Decolpych.com aims to encourage a realistic approach to decolonisation that looks head-on at the working of today’s neo-colonialism as well as the colonialism of a bygone era.

Suman and Hári, both researchers, writers / trainers based in the UK were members of the TCPS-UK. Five other academics who advised and supported them in developing decolpsych.com are based in Brazil, Canada, South Africa and the UK. Once published, decolpsych.com aims to bring to public attention the knowledge that has been (and continues to be) suppressed as a result of persisting colonial thinking and institutional racism. It is hoped that this website will attract contributions from academics working in the global South and provide a platform for exchange and discussion of ideas, videos, blogs, and reading material across the world. Currently the managers of decolpsych.com lack the capacity to do this. Hence, it is presented as a resource centre for people working on decolonisation, with reading lists to work with, a bibliography for decolonising work, and a sample framework developed over the past year for training psychiatrists and psychologists and the ‘psy disciplines’ generally.

5. The need for decolonisation

Columbus arriving in America in 1492 provided the opportunity for Spain and Portugal and later several other European powers to colonise South America and the Caribbean islands. And they did this with genocidal brutality. Colonisation then spread into North America, perhaps a little less fiercely than in South America, with native Americans being herded into reservations and their numbers decimated. Finally, with wealth derived from exploitation of America and its people, and labour of enslaved Africans transported across the Atlantic (‘sugar and slavery’) European powers, especially Great Britain, kickstarted the industrial revolution, developed agriculture and pursuits like coal mining, and crucially weapons of mass destruction, albeit with information from outside Europe (e.g. the technologies for making gunpowder). And various European countries piled in. The notion of Europeans, ‘white people’, being superior to others became a dogma spread by Western cultures spread by power-money based notions supported by pseudoscience in Europe — early science based on mathematics that thrived in Arabia and India was ‘pure’ promoting ideas of objectivity of the type adopted much later by the so-called European Enlightenment. The riches derived by ‘sugar and slavery’ duing colonialism then resulted in ‘science’ moving to Europe. And the notions of white people alone having the right to rule other ‘races’; and racism became institutionalised in most if not all cultures of the world. All this continued for about 300 to 400 years.

Then came the second world war (1939-45) led by protagonist colonial powers. Forms of political decolonisation took place towards the end of this war and soon after that with the breakdown of the large European colonial empires. Most colonies (populated by non-Europeans but ruled by European countries) were converted into politically independent states. In the course of colonisation, several European-owned colonies acquired populations of settlers from Europe. Political power shifted from the grasp of colonisers to local inhabitants through what were called ‘independence movements’. In some places most of the political power in what became ‘former colonies’ passed to descendants of people who had been living in the former colonies during pre-colonial days; but in many places (for example, most parts of the so-called ‘Latin countries’ of South America, Australia, New Zealand and South and South-West Africa), political power passed to descendants of colonisers, leaving these places with ongoing issues of power-sharing, often unstable.

Although political decolonisation, more or less, quickly or slowly, occurred in all European colonies, meaningful decolonisation on a large scale (where, for example, there was proper dismantling of institutional racism, re-distribution of wealth, reparations for past misdemeanours, and prevention of further colonisation) did not take place. Nor was the need for such decolonisation seen as necessary by most people of the countries concerned. That is until the 1950s and 1960s, when several newly politically independent Asian and African countries decided that something more was needed —- for example, in the declarations by the leaders of governments of twenty-nine such nations at the Bandung conference in April 1955. The vision of such a world was then called the Third World — a new dawn of true independence for all people everywhere, associated when third-worldly ideas were first talked about with abolishing international power-blocs such as ‘The West’ or later ‘the Nuclear States’ (ones with nuclear weapons of mass destruction). A modern power-bloc approaches have been ‘NATO states (members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’) or ‘BRICS’ (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa). The Third World vision did not work out in practical terms but the yearning for such a future has persisted in the notion of (truly meaningful) decolonisation, which has been talked about and written about during the past three decades. Clearly, what should have been learned is that anything like decolonisation too must be compromised with practicality, feasiblity and common sense. And the limitations of human-kind, our vulnerability to narcisism, self-interest and ordinary human weakness.

There are many workstreams in academia today on ways of bringing about meaningful decolonisation (and hence a large literature on the subject) there is little evidence of a common understanding on how this can be accomplished in a seemingly postcolonial world — at least as far as psychiatry and psychology are concerned. Some approaches to decolonisation that we see today tend to be naive, such as making assumptions about broad cultural differences between the global North and global South, for instance that one tends to ‘medicalise’ and the other sort of ‘spiritualise’ psychosocial stress; others are blandly tokenistic — for example, the Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCPsych), the body responsible for training psychiatrists in the UK, claimed in 2021 that by adding ‘cultural sensitivity’ to it, the curriculum for psychiatric training produced by RCPsych had been decolonised. We hope the website decolpsych.com helps to clarify the field of what decolonisation really means in today’s world so that the two disciplines (psychiatry and psychology), once they are decolonised, can provide a basis for a reformed mental health system by removing notions derived from colonial thinking and practices introduced for, and with, colonialism.

The approach to decolonising that underpins decolpsych.com is one of practical pragmatism in the context of social justice in today’s world — primarily aimed at dealing with the damage (to psychiatry and psychology) caused by institutional racism and coloniality while preserving those aspects of the disciplines that reflect true scientific value and social justice. The pragmatism (of decolonising) means that the finished product is consistent with modern multicultural societies where in effect all cultures and all individuals are equal. We believe that decolonising is not about detaching psychiatry and psychology from ‘Western culture’ (although that is where they arose during the European ‘Enlightenment’), but opening up the disciplines to a variety of cultural influences. Decolonising is about critically re-structuring psychiatry and psychology promoting a diversity of thinking and a clear antiracism. The knowledge base that informs a decolonised psychiatry and psychology should include:

(a) ‘Indigenous psychologies’ (global psychologies in decolonised language) that carry beliefs about ‘mind’ and ‘mental matters’ often embedded in religion and philosophies of non-Western cultural origin; and ‘ethno-psychiatries’ (psychiatries of the world in decolonised language), essentially ways of helping people with psycho-social problems that are active in ethnic and other subcultural groups in various parts of the world often today providing culturally hybrid system of mental health;

(b) ‘liberation psychologies’, ways of thinking about human interactions and activities associated with political struggles of the colonised; and

(c) the psychologies and psychiatries that thrive in the variety of healing systems in Asia, Africa and pre-Columbian America that began long before Western ‘psychiatry’ such as those in the māristāns — mental hospitals in areas ruled by the Caliphates located between Bhagdad in the East and Cordoba in the West, and in places such as Tibet (influenced by Buddhism), and healing systems in countries where the Ayurvedic medical tradition is strong.

We hope that the approach we outline would lead eventually to a (decolonised) critical mental health — a system or perhaps several systems — informed by (decolonised) critical psychiatry and critical psychology, both with their own inter-related literatures and culturally embedded wisdom in many parts of the world. Following Indian psychologist Asish Nandy (1983), our approach to decolonising psychiatry and psychology is about ‘combining fundamental social criticism [of psychiatry and psychology] with a defence of non-modern [meaning non-Western in decolonised language] cultures and traditions’. … Of being able to ‘speak of the plurality of critical traditions and of human rationality’. Recognising that ‘neither is Descartes the last word on reason nor is Marx that on the critical spirit’ (pg. x). 

We are critical of the meaning given to the term ‘diversity’ as used in some countries of the global North (for example, UK) to denote skin-colour and other physical bodily indicators of ‘race’. And, we propose a decolonised meaning of being ‘critical’ of psychiatry and psychology as one linked to ‘diversity’. In our view, the two terms (diversity and criticality) should be decolonised.

Nigerian philosopher Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze (2008) wrote: ‘The modern mind [modern in a decolonised sense] cannot but think diversely. Diversity is not as local or practical a matter as some would like to think. … [D]iversity constitutes a necessary condition of thinking in general. Without diversity there is no thought. And without thought there is no mind’ (p. 2-3). Decolonisation is about moving forward to a reformed, modern, diverse psychiatry and diverse psychology that draw from a range of cultural traditions, are overtly antiracist and together produce critical mental health.

Bibliography for Home Page.

Black, Jeremy. (2011) A Brief History of Slavery. A New Global History. Great Britain: Robinson. First published in USA by Running Press.

Elkins, Caroline (2022) Legacy of Violence. A History of British Empire. London: Bodley Head.

Eze, E. C. (2008) On Reason. Rationality in a world of cultural conflict and racism. Durham & London: Duke University Press.

Gildea, Robert (2019) Empires of the Mind. The Colonial Past and the politics of the Present. Cambridge, New York & Melbourne: Cambridge University Press.

Nandy, A. (1983) The Intimate Enemy. Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism, second edition. Oxford:  Oxford University Press.

Mignolo, Walter and Walsh, Catherine E. (2018). On Decoloniality. Concepts, Analytics, Praxis. Durham and London: Duke University Press

Walwin, James (1993) Black Ivory. A History of British Slavery. London: Fontana Press, imprint of Harper Collins.

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We hope that the approach we outline would lead eventually to a (decolonised) critical mental health — a system or perhaps several systems — informed by (decolonised) critical psychiatry and critical psychology, both with their own inter-related literatures and culturally embedded wisdom in many parts of the world. Following Indian psychologist Asish Nandy (1983), our approach to decolonising psychiatry and psychology is about ‘combining fundamental social criticism [of psychiatry and psychology] with a defence of non-modern [meaning non-Western in decolonised language] cultures and traditions’. … Of being able to ‘speak of the plurality of critical traditions and of human rationality’. Recognising that ‘neither is Descartes the last word on reason nor is Marx that on the critical spirit’ (pg. x). 

We hope that www.decolpsych.com will provide an inspiration to people who pursue, or wish to pursue, an effective decolonisation. But the longer term intention is that it will develop the capacity — possibly by attracting the input of personnel — to provide:

(a) platforms for articles, videos and blogs, or just ideas on how psychiatry and psychology could / should be decolonised; and how this can be done in ways that are practicable and realistic;

(b) stories and experiences of people who try to bring about such decolonisation;

(c) bibliographies and reading lists of books and articles appertaining to decolonisation; and

(d)‘a sample framework’ for decolonising theory and practice of psychiatry and psychology and a decolonised curriculum for training in these disciplines, and the wider ‘psy disciplines’.

The approach to decolonising that underpins this website is one of practical pragmatism in the context of social justice in today’s world — primarily aimed at dealing with the damage (to psychiatry and psychology) caused by institutional racism and coloniality while preserving those aspects of the disciplines that reflect true scientific value and social justice. The pragmatism (of decolonising) means that the finished product is consistent with modern multicultural societies where in effect all cultures and all individuals are equal. We believe that decolonising is not about detaching psychiatry and psychology from ‘Western culture’ (although that is where they arose during the European ‘Enlightenment’), but opening up the disciplines to a variety of cultural influences. Decolonising is about critically re-structuring psychiatry and psychology promoting a diversity of thinking and a clear antiracism. The knowledge base that informs a decolonised psychiatry and psychology should include:

(a) ‘Indigenous psychologies’ (global psychologies in decolonised language) that carry beliefs about ‘mind’ and ‘mental matters’ often embedded in religion and philosophies of non-Western cultural origin; and ‘ethno-psychiatries’ (psychiatries of the world in decolonised language), essentially ways of helping people with psycho-social problems that are active in ethnic and other subcultural groups in various parts of the world often today providing culturally hybrid system of mental health;

(b) ‘liberation psychologies’, ways of thinking about human interactions and activities associated with political struggles of the colonised; and

(c) the psychologies and psychiatries that thrive in the variety of healing systems in Asia, Africa and pre-Columbian America that began long before Western ‘psychiatry’ such as those in the māristāns — mental hospitals in areas ruled by the Caliphates located between Bhagdad in the East and Cordoba in the West, and in places such as Tibet (influenced by Buddhism), and healing systems in countries where the Ayurvedic medical tradition is strong.

We hope that our approach would lead eventually to a (decolonised) critical mental health — a system or perhaps several systems — informed by (decolonised) critical psychiatry and critical psychology, both with their own inter-related literatures and culturally embedded wisdom in many parts of the world. Following Indian psychologist Asish Nandy (1983), our approach to decolonising psychiatry and psychology is about ‘combining fundamental social criticism [of psychiatry and psychology] with a defence of non-modern [meaning non-Western in decolonised language] cultures and traditions’. … Of being able to ‘speak of the plurality of critical traditions and of human rationality’. Recognising that ‘neither is Descartes the last word on reason nor is Marx that on the critical spirit’ (pg. x). 

For Suman Fernando:

<tssfern2@staff.londonmet.ac.uk>

<sumanfernando32@gmail.com>

For Hári Sewell:

<contact@hsconsultancy.org.uk>

All publications on this website are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. And permission for videos are for screening only for non-commercial purposes, and not for streaming or downloading.