Overview

The mental health of Aboriginal peoples in Canada reflects their unique cultures and histories as well as current social and political challenges. This collection addresses the origins of mental problems and culturally appropriate and effective responses for mental health services and promotion. Healing Traditions is not a handbook of practice but a starting point for thinking critically about current issues.The book is divided into four sections: an introduction to the mental health of Indigenous peoples; origins and representations of social suffering; transformations of identity and community; and traditional healing and mental health services. Cross-cutting themes include the impact of colonialism, sedentarization, and forced assimilation, the importance of land for indigenous identity and an ecocentric self, notions of space and place as part of the cultural matrix of identity and experience, and processes of healing and spirituality as sources of resilience.Offering a unique combination of mental health and socio-cultural perspectives, Healing Traditions will be useful to readers in Aboriginal communities and to health professionals, educators, community workers, educators, politicians, social scientists, and students.

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9780774815239

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Author Information

Laurence J. Kirmayer is James McGill Professor and Director, Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry, McGill University, and also Director of the Institute of Community and Family Psychiatry, Sir Mortimer B. Davis Jewish General Hospital, Montreal. Gail Guthrie Valaskakis was Director of Research, Aboriginal Healing Foundation, Ottawa, until her death in 2007.

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