In this episode of Our Sick Society, we explore the intersection of digital exclusion and mental health through the eyes of activists, artists with lived experience, medical anthropologists, and computer scientists. Dörte Bemme (@DBemme) and River Ujhadbor (@River_Chaoss) guide us through 12 different perspectives that trace the edge of digital exclusion through policy, intervention, digital care, and our everyday lives and emotions.

Activist Kate Scodellaro talks about how digital exclusion affects people with disabilities and amplifies other inequalities in the UK.
Theatre artists River Ujhadbor, Chill Jill, Amala Joy, Oriana, and Kim Marsh bring to life what digital exclusion feels and sounds like in powerful soundscapes and spoken word poetry.

The editors of the blog series “Tracking Digital Psy” (@somatosphere), Natassia Brenman (@NFBrenman) and Beth Semel (@bethmsemel), discuss with four scholars how digital exclusion is encoded in mental health service provision, in algorithms, and apps.

Anthropologist Rebecca Lester (@psychanthro) reflects on exclusions emerging from digital mental health care in the US.
Psychologist Manuel Capella (@capellamanu) talks about how telepsychiatry in Ecuador is a neoliberal form of care offered by a government unwilling to engage with social and structural issues
Artist and computer scientist Jonathan Zong (@ohnobackspace) reflects on the digital binary as exclusive by design, and on how digital technologies can mean both care and control.

Anthropologists Livia Garafolo (@livgar_) and Alexa Hagerty (@anthroptimist), advocate for designing digital technologies together with communities, and with their notions of digital inclusion in mind.

We are grateful for the support from the Theatre Company Clean Break, ESRC UKRI Impact Fund, and the Impact Fund from the Department for Global Health and Social Medicine at King’s College London.

For more information about research discussed in this episode, click here:
http://somatosphere.net/series/tracking-digital-psy/

Download the transcript here:
https://bit.ly/OSS9_Transcript

Episode 9: Digital exclusions: mental health and digital life

The social conditions of war and conflict shape the landscape of mental health for those affected by violence, persecution, and displacement. The episode, hosted by Centre Research Assistant Milena Wuerth, considers how systems of funding and hierarchies of expertise shape how mental health is defined in humanitarian interventions. Our guests share personal, clinical, and academic insights that reveal the many layers within dominant concepts of ‘trauma’. Finally, they suggest ways to make research more equitable, sustainable and representative of lived experience for those enduring or fleeing violent conflict.

Milena Wuerth joined King’s College London in January 2022 as a Research Assistant on the Together to Transform: A mutual learning platform to develop a social paradigm for global mental health. Milena holds a BA in Social Anthropology from the London School of Economics and is currently pursuing a MSc in Public Health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Onwuzurike Ogan is a Master’s student at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and works as a consultant psychiatrist for the Nigerian Ministry of Defence.

Thurayya Zreik is a qualitative mental health researcher in mental health and has worked as a consultant for NGOs including the ICRC and War Child Holland and for Lebanon’s National Mental Health Program.

Doerte Bemme is a lecturer in Society and Mental Health at King’s College London, and Tessa Roberts is a post-doctoral research fellow for the Centre for Society and Mental Health at King’s College London. They are joint Principal investigators of the Together to Transform project, a mutual learning platform to develop a social paradigm for global mental health.

To learn more about the Together to Transform, please visit our website: www.together2transform.org 

For more information about the GOAL project and similar research, visit the website of LSHTM’s Centre for Global Chronic Conditions: https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/research/centres/centre-global-chronic-conditions 
Follow the Centre on Twitter @LSHTM_CGCC

Read more about how to implement co-production principles in academic research, authored by Thurayya’s colleauges at LSHTM: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/354161201_Research_as_usual_in_humanitarian_settings_Equalising_power_in_academic-NGO_research_partnerships_through_co-production

Episode 11: Mental health in conflict settings

In this episode, our host Lavinia Black speaks to Geraldine about the challenges of recovery during lockdown. Geraldine has been in recovery for 14 years and has used the skills and networks she developed through Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) to get through the pandemic. With face-to-face meetings on hold across the UK, the two reflect on the important role that AA played in their journey to recovery, and how others are learning to adapt in the lead up to Christmas. Episode 4 was hosted by Lavinia Black, Expert by Experience and co-host of Our Sick Society.

Episode 4: Recovery and Lockdown

A podcast exploring how social changes affect mental health 🧠 Developed and presented by King's College London researchers & Experts by Experience. Funded by ESRC Impact Acceleration Account.

Episode 9: Digital exclusions: mental health and digital life

Our Sick Society

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