Narrative Mediation of Conventional and New "Mental Health" Paradigms: Reading the Stories of Immigrant Iranian Women

Abstract

The potential of storytelling to effect change and produce new knowledge is being recognized across disciplines. Two conditions are necessary to realize these goals: first, reading of stories must be contextualized to include larger social and political landscapes; and second, how stories are read and toward what end must be closely examined. This article explores these issues with reference to the subject of the "mental health" or emotional well-being of a cohort of postrevolution Iranian women from metropolitan Vancouver, British Columbia. Reading their stories at a particular moment in time shows that well-being is essentially grounded in spaces and places where we live, work, and engage in social interactions. This commonplace knowledge, which is subdued in medical discourse, is retrieved through Iranian women's stories of life and living told at a time when their experiences, histories, and viewpoints on health are subject to erasure.

Mental Health of Immigrants and Refugees

“…Cultural consultants with backgrounds in the immigrant and refugee communities have been found to be particularly effective in facilitating accurate assessment and improved services utilization and effectiveness (Kirkmayer, Groleau, Guzder, Blake, & Jarvis, 2003). Approaches that address the need for validation, mutual support, and processing of their common experiences have been found to be particularly effective (Dossa, 2002;Simich, Beiser, & Mawani, 2003). Another critical function for mental health and social services is that of educating and assisting immigrants and refugees from diverse cultures in understanding different cultural norms and practices in their new environment, as well as educating mainstream providers about immigrants' traditional cultural practices.…”

Experiencing Loss: A Muslim Widow’s Bereavement Narrative

“…For Aisha, prayer and fasting play a central role in her life and thus, as a Muslim woman wearing the hijab (headscarf), she strongly identifies with a religious minority group that is increasingly spoken of adversely in public discourses in Denmark as in other Western societies. Muslim migrant women are often portrayed as oppressed by patriarchal cultures, lacking in agency and the resources considered important according to prevailing societal discourses such as formal education, language capabilities and workability (De Souza 2004;Dossa 2002). It is rare for these women to find opportunities to relate their experiences; however, Aisha used the interview to engage with the wider social and political landscapes encapsulating her minority experience (Dossa 1999).…”

“…The storyteller speaks through interruptions caused by death, narrating a story of how ''one rises to the occasion'' and reclaims meaning, agency and a sense of self (Frank 1995;Jackson 1998). Cultural resources among migrant Muslim women in Western societies are often unnoticed or devaluated by society (De Souza 2004;Dossa 2002). By narrating her story and engaging with the hospital staff, Aisha establishes her presence and challenges the social construction of veiled Muslim women as inferior, silenced others.…”

“…By narrating her story and engaging with the hospital staff, Aisha establishes her presence and challenges the social construction of veiled Muslim women as inferior, silenced others. Reclaiming agency by sharing life stories and foregrounding roles and values tied to motherhood, faith and ethnicity, for example, may serve as an attempt to change the life conditions of minority women by calling others to witness both her suffering and her cultural resources and resiliency (Dossa 2002;. Situating these narratives of self-representation within the particular societal and political circumstances in contemporary Western societies thus enables identification of shared aspirations across migrant women's individual storytelling.…”

“…The interactions of cultural and religious phenomena, current and prior living circumstances, and migration history point to the significant potential insight we may gain from listening carefully to bereavement narratives. As such, their stories represent an undiscovered wealth of information regarding the dynamic and contextualized nature of human sense making, and the role of agency among women who are often rendered structurally vulnerable and invisible by powerful discourses on gender, religion and cultural diversity (Dossa 2002(Dossa , 2006.…”