Diploma in Anti-Caste Mental Health Practices 2024
The Diploma in Anti-Caste Mental Health Practices 2024 is a 8 month online exploration starting February 2024.
The Diploma in Anti-Caste Mental Health Practices is informed by the Phule-Ambedkarite and feminist practices.
It is a collaboration between The Blue Dawn and Narrative Practices India Collective.
Our work has been inspired by the cultural movement and protest cultures of the Ambedkarite movement, and the inception of this course is a result of so many such stories of resistance and love from the movement.
“The value of a man was reduced to his immediate identity and nearest possibility. To a vote. To a number. To a thing. Never was a man treated as a mind. As a glorious thing made up of stardust. In every field, in studies, in streets, in politics, and in dying and living.”
Although anti-oppressive mental health practices are gaining influence in India, discussions on how caste and collective meaning-making are fundamental to addressing structural issues have been overlooked in mainstream mental health practices and curriculums.
The wisdom of lived experiences, and the vocabulary of groups who are forced to the margins has been dismissed or is limited to community-level programs. Imagining this Diploma that explicitly focuses on anti-caste mental health care, as a practice in itself is a form of resistance against the mainstream ideas of mental health framework in India.
Our vision through this course is to bring in tools for transformative mental health practices where every community and individual is seen as a glorious thing made up of stardust.
What we will explore?
Politics of experience and mental health …
The Caste system and the stories of resistance of oppressed caste groups in India …
Caste capital and its influence in therapy rooms, operations of a collective/centre, and narratives that are formed …
How does caste prejudice manifest in everyday personal and professional spaces?
To learn practices and skills informed by anti-caste stance …
We will be exploring maps to navigate through territories of life which are guided by these beliefs,
Communities and people are experts of their own lives, who have know-hows and wisdom in responding to adversities which are stored in the stories of their lived experiences.
We are all making meaning of our experiences but this meaning making is influenced by the socio-cultural-historical-political intersections.
All the problems in this world are located in structural systems of oppression and not in communities and people’s bodies and identities.
We are all made of stories and stories is how we make sense of the world around us and ourselves. No story is fixed which means we can re-author them in our preferred ways.
Stories and identity construction is political because stories are advantaged and disadvantaged based on their gender, sexuality, skin color, caste, class, religion, region, ability, schooling, etc.
This exploration will happen through sharing and drawing on participants' and trainers’ lived experiences and emphasize on co-learning as peers and developing a community that co-travels together.
