Dear Colleagues,

The Rare Disease Social Research Centre (RDSRC) at the Institute for Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences invites both scholars and non-academic audiences who are interested in mental health to join the new seminar series "Critical Mental Health" starting in September 2022. The seminars will feature lectures by leading scholars in critical mental health studies from the UK, Japan and New Zealand. In the last decades, mental health has become increasingly present in both global and local public discourses; the COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated discussions about the mental health crisis.

These seminars aim to introduce this understudied perspective to the Polish academic community and to foster interdisciplinary dialogue between sociology, anthropology, and medicine. The scope of the topics covered during the seminars include the Marxist critique of psychiatry and psychology, global dissemination of the depression category and its consequences, the significance of cross-cultural and comparative perspectives on mental health, and the implications of war experience for societal mental health.

All seminars will be held online with exception of the first (22.09.2022), which will be in hybrid mode - both at the Staszica Palace, Nowy Swiat 72, Warsaw (Rm 268) and online.

The seminar program is available in the attachment.

To register, please contact us at: rdsrc@ifispan.edu.pl

We look forward to seeing you!

Best regards,

Malgorzata Rajtar & Beata Szulecka