CHAPTER 6. Gendered Trauma and Its Effects: Domestic Vio lence and PTSD in Oaxaca

Duncan, Whitney L.

doi:10.9783/9780812291469-007

Cited by 8 publications

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“…Mental health programs and interventions in the region must be comprehensive, accounting for local understandings of personhood, embodiment, and violence-related suffering (Duncan, 2016; James, 2016), and paying attention to social factors such as ethnicity, migration, and socio-economic status. The discursive and causal models of Grisi Siknis experiences can reveal the specific stressors and sources of suffering among the individuals affected by the illness.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Grisi Siknis: A cultural idiom of gender-based violence and structural inequalities in eastern Nicaragua

Venegas

2022

Transcult Psychiatry

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For the Miskitu of Nicaragua, Grisi Siknis is a contagious illness that predominantly affects women. It is characterized by numerous psychosomatic symptoms, including headache, fear, aggressive behavior, loss of consciousness, and periods of rapid frenzy. Although Grisi Siknis has gained academic and public attention due to its unique cultural elements and perceived sexual aspects, little is known how the contextual and gender dimensions of Grisi Siknis are played out in relation to the socio-political context in the region. Based on 16 months of ethnographic work in the Nicaraguan Miskitu Coast, including semi-structured interviews (n = 20) and participant observation, this article documents a semantic shift in the embodied and symbolic language of a cultural idiom of distress. I show how duhindu (Miskitu spirit associated with illness and misfortune) and witchcraft are symbols that share cultural resonance in the Miskitu community, while gender violence discourse is a new language incorporated into the logic of this cultural idiom of distress. I argue that this semantic shift allows the individuals in this study to communicate local experiences of complex forms of structural inequalities (migration status, unemployment, ethnic identity) and gender-based violence that tend to be normalized as a ubiquitous cultural problem while preserving the broader socio-cultural meaning the Grisi Siknis represents. The ethnographic accounts of Grisi Siknis provide empirical data to unpack the unexplored contextual processes and local discourses that transform the meaning and logic of cultural idioms of distress at the individual level of experience.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Grisi Siknis: A cultural idiom of gender-based violence and structural inequalities in eastern Nicaragua

Venegas

2022

Transcult Psychiatry

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“…Far from cultivating subjects who might labor successfully in new industries and modes of capitalist production, Oaxacans frequently engage with mental‐health services in attempts to mitigate the ravages of ongoing poverty and unemployment. Indeed, many of the emotions people learn to express when they unburden themselves in therapeutic settings revolve around the pain of poverty, migration, violence, and powerlessness (Duncan , ).…”

Section: The Ironies Of Psy‐globalizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Psicoeducaciónin the land of magical thoughts: Culture and mental‐health practice in a changing Oaxaca

Duncan

2017

American Ethnologist

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At a time of uncertainty and change in Oaxaca, Mexico, mental‐health practice dovetails with political‐economic projects to reflect and produce tensions around “culture.” Promoting mental health is linked to goals for economic development, and notions of culture and modernity are co‐constructed in ways that cast culture as a barrier to mental health. “Psychological modernization” efforts therefore seek to flatten cultural difference in the interests of national advancement. Not only do psy‐services in Oaxaca provide means of self‐understanding and technologies for self‐cultivation in the context of modernity, but they also actively seek to produce the psychological conditions for modernity. Yet many professionals attribute Mexico's mental‐health problems to the very processes of modernization, development, and globalization that their projects seek to facilitate. En tiempos de incertidumbre y cambio en Oaxaca, México, la práctica de la salud mental se acopla con los proyectos económicos y políticos para reflejar y producir tensiones en torno a la “cultura”. La promoción de la salud mental está vinculada a objetivos para el desarrollo económico. Las nociones de cultura y modernidad se construyen conjuntamente en formas que configuran a la cultura como una barrera para la salud mental. Los esfuerzos de “modernización psicológica”, por lo tanto, buscan aplanar las diferencias culturales en pro del progreso nacional. Los servicios psicológicos en Oaxaca no sólo proveen medios para el autoconocimiento y tecnologías para el autocultivo en el contexto de la modernidad, sino que también buscan activamente producir las condiciones psicológicas para la modernidad. Sin embargo, muchos profesionales atribuyen los problemas de salud mental de México al proceso mismo de modernización, desarrollo y la globalización que sus proyectos intentan facilitar. [gubernamentalidad, salud mental, modernización, multiculturalidad, psicología, psiquiatría, México]

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“…I open this article with an account of one session to begin to approximate the lived experience of participating in such a group and, as CF facilitators phrase it, of putting the self al servicio del sistema familiar (at the service of a family system) that is not one's own—a process at the heart of this therapy based on the work of German psychotherapist and former Jesuit priest Bert Hellinger. I was drawn to CF as part of my larger research project on the landscape of mental healthcare and experiences of emotion and mental health in Oaxaca, where mainstream psychology, forms of self‐help, and New Age and alternative therapeutic practices have begun to proliferate in the past two decades (Duncan , ).…”

Section: Constelaciones Familiares In Oaxacamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Psy‐practitioners appear in the media, attempting to reduce mental health stigma and provide psicoeducación on themes such as self‐esteem and the definitions of different psychiatric disorders. While public psychiatric care remains insufficient and difficult to access, general psychological care and emotional support options are increasingly visible and promoted by practitioners, organizations, and the government (Duncan , ).…”

Section: Oaxacan Therapeuticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Dinámicas Ocultas: Culture and Psy‐Sociality in Mexican Family Constellations Therapy

Duncan¹

2017

Ethos

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This article takes the ethnographic case of Family Constellations therapy in Oaxaca, Mexico, to demonstrate how a nonnative therapeutic practice articulates with local cultural frameworks to foster novel forms of therapeutic experience and sociality. Family Constellations in Oaxaca promotes particular forms of what I call “psy‐sociality,” or sociality generated by globalizing psy concepts, diagnoses, and practices, which produce new sites for self‐work and subject‐formation, but also for jointly processing social suffering, familial conflict, and psychological distress in culturally salient ways. First, participants socialize in a structured way that promotes embodied connection to others. Second, participants are socialized into gendered ways of speaking, knowing, interpreting, and acting upon the self and the family. Finally, participants are also given explicit guidance for how to confront current sociofamilial conflicts with which they are grappling. In the process, participants localize this foreign therapy according to the context of present‐day Mexico. [healing, globalization, family, sociality, self, Mexico] Este artículo toma el caso etnográfico de la terapia de Constelaciones Familiares en Oaxaca, México, para demostrar cómo una práctica terapéutica no originaria del lugar se articula con marcos culturales locales para fomentar nuevas formas de sociabilidad y experiencia terapéutica. La terapia de Constelaciones Familiares en Oaxaca promueve formas particulares de lo que yo llamo “psicosocialidad”, o socialidad generada por la globalización de conceptos, diagnósticos y prácticas psicológicas que producen nuevos escenarios para el trabajo con uno mismo y la formación de sujetos, pero también para procesar de manera conjunta el sufrimiento social, los conflictos familiares y la angustia psicológica en formas culturalmente notables. En primer lugar, los participantes socializan en una forma estructurada que promueve la conexión corporal con otros. En segundo lugar, los participantes son socializados a través de maneras de hablar, conocer, interpretar y actuar con respecto a sí mismos y a la familia relacionadas con el género. Por último, los participantes también reciben instrucciones explícitas sobre cómo confrontar conflictos sociofamiliares actuales con los que están lidiando. En el proceso, los participantes adaptan esta terapia extranjera al contexto del México actual.

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CHAPTER 6. Gendered Trauma and Its Effects: Domestic Vio lence and PTSD in Oaxaca

Cited by 8 publications

References 0 publications

Grisi Siknis: A cultural idiom of gender-based violence and structural inequalities in eastern Nicaragua

Grisi Siknis: A cultural idiom of gender-based violence and structural inequalities in eastern Nicaragua

Psicoeducaciónin the land of magical thoughts: Culture and mental‐health practice in a changing Oaxaca

Dinámicas Ocultas: Culture and Psy‐Sociality in Mexican Family Constellations Therapy

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