Our mission
The Maudsley Cultural Psychiatry Group is a new initiative within South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust. We are psychiatrists, psychologists, and social researchers who work closely with local communities to provide open and reflective spaces on race, racism, and culture in our practice.
What is cultural psychiatry?
To us, cultural psychiatry means a multi-disciplinary engagement with the way in which cultural identity (including race, gender, sexuality, language, and belief) shape the lives of our patients and their experience of our care as well as our perspectives and practice as professionals.
As clinicians working in South-East London, we care for people from a wide range of cultural and ethnic backgrounds. We ourselves also come from a range of backgrounds, often very different from those of the people using our services. Therefore, the major concerns of cultural psychiatry are present in our practice every day.
As researchers, we document the ways in which social systems created by colonisation, slavery, and other economic exploitation have become institutionalised and incorporated into our ways of living.
Our aims
To describe and counter biases and assumptions built into mental health theory and practice, including our own.
To promote consciousness around issues of culture and race, using a combination of sociological, reflective, and creative approaches.
To bridge the gap between institutional practice and community needs by working closely with those most impacted by inequalities.