DECOLONIZATION THROUGH MADNESS: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE IMPLICATIONS OF GLOBAL MENTAL HEALTH IN THE CONTEXT OF BANGLADESH

Abstract

The global mental health movement has given rise to a new discourse on the implication of the use of psychiatric-biomedical categories of disorder to standardize a global approach to mental health and illness. The aim of this research is to understand how the western biomedical categories of disorders are enforcing the erasure of local understanding of health, illness, and suffering in Bangladesh. Through the exploration of madness as a method of decolonizing ideas of mental disorder in Bangladeshi research, the research sets up new ways of integrating anti-colonial and collaborative approaches in studying illness and affliction in Bangladesh.