Empire of Madness: Reimagining Western Mental Health Care for Everyone
iSPS-US Presents: Join ISPS-US for an engaging webinar featuring author Dr. Khameer Kidia and his urgent new book, Empire of Madness: Reimagining Western Mental Health Care for Everyone. A Rhodes Scholar and Harvard physician-anthropologist, Dr. Kidia fundamentally re-evaluates the Western approach to mental health, which often focuses on medicating individual symptoms while ignoring the exploitative societal systems, from debt and housing insecurity to the psychological effects of colonialism, that cause widespread distress.
Through readings from the book and an insightful author chat, we will explore Kidia’s nuanced questions: How do history, culture, and politics shape mental distress? Can social interventions like cash payments replace pills for those in poverty? And what lessons can we draw from global mental health care approaches, particularly in poorer countries, where outcomes for conditions like schizophrenia are sometimes surprisingly better without relying solely on Western-style psychopharmacology? This event invites clinicians, caregivers, and people with lived experience to consider a truly global and mutual vision of wellbeing that prioritizes structural change alongside clinical care.
