“This is the Psychology we Need”: Maya immigrant views on mental health treatment

Authors

Robin Chancer, Pacifica Graduate Institute

Author Bio(s)

Robin Chancer, LCSW is currently enrolled in a doctoral program called Community, Liberation, Indigenous, and Ecopsychologies at Pacifica Graduate University. Previously, she worked for 15 years as a clinical social worker. She earned her MSW from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 2006. Concentrating on immigrant communities from Latin America, she worked in hospitals, nonprofits, and an international NGO in Guatemala. Her search for more justice-focused, wide-reaching models for healing led her to Pacifica’s program. Currently, she works with a legal office which serves many Indigenous migrants from Guatemala. She hopes that through relationships and study she can contribute to anti-colonial, re-humanizing work alongside migrant communities.

Publication Date

12-18-2023

Keywords

Maya Diaspora, mental health, Participatory Action Research, Maya migration, liberation psychology

Abstract

This paper engages the theme of psychological-physical-spiritual health among displaced Maya communities. To pursue knowledge about the communities’ visions for thriving in the United States, I worked with Maya leaders in Ohio to coordinate a series of dialogues utilizing a Participatory Action Research paradigm. Participants exposed ways in which Western institutions (including hospitals, mental health providers, and schools) reenact elements of colonialism and fail to offer culturally sensitive care. The participants emphasized a key missing element in their well-being: renewing the relationship with the Earth that they lost through colonization and forced migration. To separate physical/mental health from these elements would deny the current ecological realities at the heart of the migrants’ existence. It would also recreate Eurocentric false division among mind, body, soul, and spirit. Maya focus group participants claimed that a decolonial approach to healing could be initiated by returning land to the communities, which they could use for cultivation, community gathering, food sovereignty, and sacred practices. Praxis participants offered critical guidance in re-imagining health and healing in community with each other and with the Earth, which they identified as the sources of flourishing, identity, cultural history, belonging, and spiritual connection.

DOI

10.32727/26.2023.17

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License.