The treatment of mental distress within migration experience. Notes for an epistemological stance in transcultural clinical practice

Journal title RIVISTA SPERIMENTALE DI FRENIATRIA
Author/s Paolo Vistoli, Eleonora Bertacchini
Publishing Year 2017 Issue 2017/3
Language Italian Pages 13 P. 79-91 File size 685 KB
DOI 10.3280/RSF2017-003006
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Authors critically review some anthropological and philosophical concepts pertaining to transcultural psychopathology which may be useful in improving therapeutic practice for migrants presenting with mental distress. From the vast corpus of literature about cultural otherness they focus on the contributions of the anthropologist Mondher Kilani and of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, which allow the topic of the cultural Other to be explored. The Other can not be explained, nor can we fully empathize with the Other. However, we can invent the Other, consider alternative ways of looking at things, and we can question our cultural inventory. We can meet the mental pain of people belonging to other cultures in the unique migratory experience because these people are not completely "other" nor unintelligible, but we can not consider their experience analogous to the experience of other service users belonging to our culture. Using this stance, the Authors present case scenarios and propose therapeutic strategies emerging from their experience as psychiatrists working in public mental health services and as consultant to the Modena support service for asylum seekers.

Keywords: Cultural otherness, invention and possibility of the other, negotiation, transcultural processes.

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Paolo Vistoli, Eleonora Bertacchini, La cura del disagio psichico nell’esperienza migratoria. Appunti per un riferimento epistemologico della clinica transculturale in "RIVISTA SPERIMENTALE DI FRENIATRIA" 3/2017, pp 79-91, DOI: 10.3280/RSF2017-003006