Psychology Dept. Research Seminar. 6h Feb' 2020, 12-1pm. Dr Erminia Colucci - Preview of ethnographic documentary: “Breaking the chains: Anto’s Story” about mental illness and human rights abuses in Indonesia

*** Everyone welcome!  No need to book in advance ***

Date: Thursday 6th Feb' 2020
Time: 12-1pm
Room: BG09A, Building 9

Dr Erminia Colucci (Middlesex University) 

Abstract:

Thousands of people worldwide live in isolation, chained, or inside “animal cages”, naked, undernourished and often living in dirty conditions because of mental health problems. This has been identified as one of the most flagrant continuing abuses of the human rights of people with mental illness, particularly in low- resource settings where mental health services are extremely scarce and inadequate. “Breaking the chains: Anto’s story” is a testimony-style collaborative short-documentary (30 min) that depicts the subjective lived experience of Anto, an Indonesian young man who was restrained but was then released and reintegrated in the community as a self-taught artist and English student. This film follows Anto’s journey for 6 years based on his drawings, paintings and narrative, and was co-directed and co-edited with Anto himself. During the presentation, Dr Colucci who was the researcher, director, editor and film-maker on this project, will provide an overview of the issue and show a preview version of this film followed by a Q&A.

For more info https://movie-ment.org/breakingthechains/

~ This talk is aimed at anyone interested in psychology, particularly mental illness and stigma.

Students are encouraged to attend.

Attendance would benefit both undergraduate and postgraduate students from psychology and related fields ~

Biography:

Dr Erminia Colucci is Senior lecturer at the Department of Psychology at Middlesex University London and Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Global and Cultural Mental Health Unit, Centre for Mental Health, The University of Melbourne. She uses qualitative and arts-based/visual methods in her research, teaching and advocacy work in Cultural and Global mental health and Applied Cross-Cultural Psychology. Erminia’s work has largely focused on suicide and suicide prevention, human rights abuses, domestic and gender-based violence, and traditional/faith-based healing in Low-and-Middle-Income countries and people from immigrant and refugee backgrounds. Erminia is Chair of the International Association for Suicide Prevention SIG on Culture and Suicidal Behaviour and the World Association for Cultural Psychiatry SIG on Arts, Media and Mental Health, and Founder of Movie-ment (http://movie-ment.org). Among other projects, she is currently Principal Investigator on a ESRC GCRF ethnographic documentary and participatory video research project on human rights and mental health in Ghana and Indonesia. At Middlesex University London, she co-leads the third year course “Visual Psychology: arts, film and photography in Psychology” (PSY3003) and the MSC by research “Visual and Arts-based methods”.