Third manuscript on Finding Our Way is now online and free!

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Very pleased to announce that the third manuscript of the trilogy on the “Finding Our Way” visual project on lived experiences of ‘recovery’ among people from migrant and refugee backgrounds with a diagnosis of ‘mental illness’ has now been published and it is freely available.

Please share and we hope it is useful to understand and question this construct from a (decolonizing) cultural mental health perspective, enjoy!

https://rdcu.be/c03Ri

CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO ON THE FINDING OUR WAY PROJECT

ps. The Movie-ment next dream (as this is ANOTHER of my labor of love) is to do something similar but with people with lived experiences of suicidal behaviour, anyone who knows how to make this happen (including funding) please go on contact!

Italian version premiere of Harmoni: Healing together

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The Italian version of ‘Harmoni: Healing together’ will be premièred in Rome on the 3rd December 2022 as part of Feel Mare: Cinema delle donne (Women cinema) organized by Eikon.

Free entry till full, please forward to others who might be able to attend and I hope some of you can make it!

For more info and to circulate the flyer:

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7001274864682557440/

Online launch of ‘Nbakom: A little medicine, A little prayer’

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Together for Mental Health invites you to the online premiere of the ethnographic documentary “Nkabom: A Little Medicine, A Little Prayer” on the 24th March 2022 11am GMT

‘Nkabom: A little medicine, a little prayer’ is an ethnographic documentary filmed in 2019 in rural villages and towns in the central belt of Ghana. The film follows the activities of mental health nurses who are creating partnerships with healers in the communities where they work with the aim of reducing human rights abuses and improving the treatment of people with mental health conditions. The film shows how these partnerships develop, what makes them successful, and the challenges faced in negotiating the removal of restraints as well as accessing resources. The nurses and healers describe how they ka bom, join together, to reach the same goal of helping their patients to get well. WATCH THE TRAILER BELOW!

Free Registration available here!

FOR MORE INFO ABOUT THIS PROJECT AND OTHER OUTPUTS PLEASE VISIT

Together for Mental Health

Film screenings with discussion in Japan

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During the Visiting Scholar Fellowship at The University of Kyoto, three film screenings with discussion have been organized:

  1. Breaking the Chains on the 21st February 2024 at 3pm at CSAES (Kyoto) For more info https://kyoto.cseas.kyoto-u.ac.jp/en/event/20240221/
  2. ‘Harmoni: Healing together’ on the 22nd Feburary 3.30pm at the National Museum of Ethnology (Osaka) For more info https://www.itsushikawase.com/anthro-film_lab/news.html
  3. A collection of 3 unreleased short-films from the ‘Together for Mental Health’ project on the 12th March 3pm at CSAES (Kyoto). More info will soon be posted on CSEAS events page.

These events have been organized with the support of CSEAS and in particular Dr Chika Yamada. We hope to see you some of you or your friends at these events, please share through your networks!

Two peer-reviewed articles based on visual research using ethnographic documentary

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In two days the Movie-ment experience will be taken to Ghana for two workshops: one on writing qualitative and visual research in Mental Health in Ghana and Indonesia (funded by the British Academy) and the other as part of the AHRC-funded Arts and Mental Health Advocacy network. So it is very timely that two articles based on the projects Together for Mental Health and Breaking the Chains have just been published (both as Open Access).

The first is based on the thematic analysis of the transcripts, visual observations and field-notes taken as part of the data collection in Ghana ‘We are all working toward one goal. We want people to become well’: A visual exploration of what promotes successful collaboration between community mental health workers and healers in Ghana

The second is a reflection on the making of the film Breaking the Chains, including ethical decisions and other challenges as well as benefits in using ethnographic documentary to research human rights and mental health ‘Breaking the chains’: reflections on the making of an ethnographic documentary on human rights violations against people with mental illness in Indonesia 

This article accompanies two previous articles linked to this project:

Breaking the chains: ethnographic film-making in mental health

Free from pasung: A story of chaining and freedom in Indonesia told through painting, poetry and narration

We hope you will enjoy the readings and they will be useful to yours and your friends’ and colleagues’ arts-based and visual teaching, research and advocacy activities!

Can different providers work together?

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READ EXTRACTS FROM THE INTERVIEW BY THE CENTRE FOR CULTURE AND THE MIND – UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN

“In this blog, I speak with Erminia Colucci, Professor of Visual Psychology and Cultural & Global Mental Health at Middlesex University, London. She is the director of ‘Nkabom: A little medicine, a little prayer’, one of the visual research outputs from the ‘Together for Mental Health’ project which is a Ghana, Indonesia and UK joint initiative exploring collaboration between mental health workers and healers to improve mental health care (see https://movie-ment.org/together4mh). We talked about the motivation behind the Nkabom film, her thoughts about global mental health and collaboration of various mental health care providers/healers and her perception about diagnosis“… GO TO FULL TEXT

Together for Mental Health films are screened and used globally

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As part of another very successful year of screenings of Together for Mental Health films, including the launch of two other short-films (one in Bali in Jan and one in Rome in Sept), in several (academic and non) settings, this week will see the screening of ‘Harmoni: Healing Together’ at the University of Edinburgh, which follows a screening of the Ghana-based film ‘Nkabom; A little medicine, a little prayer’ in the same University last May. Information and registration available here https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/film-screening-harmoni-healing-together-tickets-725977908467?aff=oddtdtcreator

Thanks to those who have supported us along this journey, including the funders who have made it possible for the team to continue collaboration on other three projects/initiatives, including a Ghana-Indonesia Arts and Mental Health network funded by UKRI AHRC.

Thank you and let’s continue working together for mental health!

Video-recording of post-screening forum on ‘Creative and visual methodologies in mental health research’ at Wellcome Collection

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On 18 October, Land Body Ecologies hosted the screening of Nkabom: A little medicine, a little prayer in the Forum of Wellcome Collection.

Nkabom is part of Together for Mental Health, an interdisciplinary, international collaboration between Indonesia, Ghana and the UK. Using visual methods, it explores examples of collaboration between mental health workers and pluralistic healing approaches and their impact on preventing human rights abuse and improving care for people living with mental illness experience.

Nkabom was directed and filmed by Erminia Colucci, principal investigator of the collaborative visual research project Together for Mental Health. After the film there was a chance to reflect on the processes of visual and creative methodologies between a panel of speakers thinking about sound and film as data. We had an insightful discussion with Dr Erminia Colucci (Moderator and speaker) and speakers Ben Eaton, Dr Lily Kpobi, Lilian Maina, Dr Ursula Read and Anto (Agus) Sugianto connecting with us both in the UK, as well as from Indonesia, Ghana, Kenya and Pakistan.

Together, we exchanged stories of mental health, the realities of collaboration between mental health nurses and local healers in communities, funding difficulties with mental health research, and more.

A VIDEO-RECORDING OF THE PRE/POST-SCREENING EVENT IS AVAILABLE HERE.

[From LBE Youtube Channel]

Together for Mental Health screenings in London

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Dear Movie-ment followers and supporters,

we have been silent with our blogs/emails not for absence of activity but at the opposite because we were so busy with dissemination of past visual projects outputs and creating videos for new projects!

We are very happy to announce that the Together for Mental Health films are being screened at many festivals worldwide, where they have also won prizes including as Best Documentary last month!

After screening in Copenhagen last week, ‘Nkabom: A little medicine, a little prayer’ will be finally shown LIVE in London on the12th October at Birbeck Cinema at 6-8.30pm and 18th at Wellcome Collection at 3-6pm with Together for Mental Health teams’members,please click the links to register for your free ticket and we hope to see you there!

ps For regular updates on this project you may also follow our @Together4MH social media pages, in addition to the Movie-ment pages.

Limited Together for Mental Health film preview screenings

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Ghana and Indonesia are two countries with continuing problems of human rights violation against people living with mental illnesses. Can mental health professionals and traditional and faith-based healers collaborate to prevent such abuse and provide humane care?

We share stories of these collaborations through two films made in Ghana and Indonesia, before their official premières. The films were made through Together for Mental Health, a visual research project with Middlesex University, Universitas Gadjah Mada, University of Ghana, and King’s College London funded by the UK Global Challenges Research Fund (ESRC).

REGISTER (FREE) AND JOIN THE LIMITED PREVIEW SCREENINGS OF BOTH ETHNOGRAPHIC DOCUMENTARIES FOLLOWED BY DISCUSSION ON THE 14TH JULY 2021

Keep following our webpage for future updates, releases and publications!