Dr. Joseph P. Gone. His conference lecture is titled, “Anticolonial Approaches to Community Mental Health Services for American Indians: Enacting AlterNative Psy-ence.”
Native American people suffer mental health issues just like any other community in the world. Many community members struggle with substance abuse, depression, and associated distress. But living on reservations also presents unique problems. To understand, and thereby help to address Native American mental health challenges, it is extremely important to first study their own context and the framework of their lives in a non-decolonized society.
Research performed with Native American communities has found that understanding history and spirituality is extremely important to understanding the mental health problems of people living on reservations. Forms of disabling distress can be attributed to processes of Euro-American colonization. Joseph P. Gone recasts “mental disorders” as (post)colonial pathologies. This understanding anchors an entire “alterNative” Indigenous mental health framework that is parallel to, but distinguished from, dominant psychiatric discourse. Gone has collaborated with tribal communities for more than 25 years to critique conventional mental health services and harness traditional culture and spirituality for advancing Indigenous wellbeing.
Joseph P. Gone is Faculty Director of the Harvard University Native American Program, Professor of Anthropology, Global Health, and Social Medicine in the Faculty of Medicine at Harvard University. In 2014, Gone was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2021, he received the APA Award for Distinguished Professional Contributions to Applied Research and was elected to the National Academy of Medicine. His work explores the cultural psychology of self, identity, personhood, and social relations in Indigenous community settings with respect to mental health professions. These publications have identified alternative Indigenous construal of the mental health enterprise, with an emphasis on historical trauma and traditional healing. An enrolled member of the Aaniiih-Gros Ventre Tribal Nation of Montana, he also served briefly as the Chief Administrative Officer for the Fort Belknap Indian reservation.
Learn More
- Decolonizing Research Methods Can Improve Psychological Treatments: This review of Nobel speaker Joseph P. Gone’s paper on decolonizing psychology discusses the importance of decentering Western psychology for creating more equality in mental health intervention.
- “The Thing Happened as He Wished”: Recovering and American Indian Cultural Psychology: Indigenous people in the U.S. experience the traumas of colonization to this day. This academic article discusses the way therapy can be provided to Indigenous people without reproducing these traumas and perpetuating a colonized power structure.
- Beyond Trauma Podcast: This podcast is narrated by a group of therapists from the Beyond Healing Center. They discuss how to facilitate conversations about trauma and guide listeners on their healing journey.