Note: Dr. Anderson is on academic leave until February 2026.
I am Dr. Shahina Parvin, the Racial Literacy and Anti-Racism Lead in the Office of Anti-Racism. I will be hosting the December blog.
This month I briefly reflect on mental health matters and some of the challenges posed by the overreliance on the biomedical model in mental health care systems in Canada. According to the biomedical model, mental health is associated with biological features, ‘a disease of the brain,’ and the treatment response prioritizes medication. Within this framework, the social determinants of mental and physical health are minimized, and mental illness is regarded as an individual issue.
As a temporary student immigrant woman from the Global South who was living in Lethbridge, Alberta at the time, I was experiencing systemic and everyday forms of racism and discrimination that impacted my mental health. In addition to therapy, I was prescribed antidepressants to help me overcome my pain and to “feel better.” This treatment response had the opposite effect. This approach demonstrated a limited understanding the nature and effect of these harms in my life. As a result, my health needs were ignored, and my overall health was further undermined.
The biomedical model is informed by Eurocentric culture and practices. It is rooted in the historical development of psychiatry as a sub-discipline of medicine in the West during the mid-nineteenth century. Consequently, similar to physical illness, an individual’s mental health is understood as linked to as a physical/biological issue. This binary framing fails to identify, much less integrate the histories, experiences and social elements as influencing a person’s mental health. Philosopher and psychiatrist Frantz Fanon (2007/1961) documented the effect of colonial violence and domination on the physical and mental health of the colonized. As Fanon noted, his “patients suffered not from a predisposition to mental breakdown, as the colonial physicians claimed… Instead, the unspeakable brutalities of colonial dominations” affected the patients’ mental health (Keller, 2008, pp. 3-4).
In a society organized around hierarchies of difference, we are differently vulnerable owing to our identities and social locations in relation to different systems of power. Because the biomedical solution relies on a “One Size Fits All” approach it is limited in its capacity to be responsive to the varied experiences and needs of those whose lives and mental health are affected by everyday injustices, violence, and systemic discrimination.
Fanon’s insights about the historical, geopolitical and social impacts offer vital information regarding mental health, treatment, and healing. In this spirit, achieving health equity requires that our approaches to health and well-being take into account the diversity and complexity of the experiences and needs of members of marginalized communities.
Resources
Fanon, F. (2007). The wretched of the earth. (R. Philcox, Trans.). New York: Grove. (Original work published 1961).
Keller, R. C. (2008). Colonial Madness: Psychiatry in French North Africa. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press.