Idioms of Distress, Resilience and Well-Being: Enhancing understanding about mental health in multilingual contexts

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This project aims to extend research presently in Ghana, Gaza, Uganda and Zimbabwe by focusing on the way local languages are used to express distress and well-being. Specifically the proposed research aims to enhance understanding about how capabilities can be developed by drawing on local idioms - of well-being, resilience and distress. Arts and humanities perspectives will be brought together with the existing Global Mental Health literature to develop innovative ways of translating these idioms with greater sensitivity to the context in which they have emerged. IN particular the place of the local environment and its importance for expression of pain and of resilience and well-being will be analysed.Proposed Activities: In order to achieve this aim this proposal will:a) engage in desk research to conduct a comparative literature review of expressions of distress, resilience and well-being in both the medical literature on mental health and in language studies and anthropology.b) Conduct fieldwork in-situ and digitally, using story-generating methodologies which encourage participants to tell stories about their languages and their use of words in translingual contexts and research sites with researchers and story-tellers. c) Embed the data collected into programmes which raise awareness of the importance of multilingual sensitivity for working cross-culturally and which aim to mainstream approaches to well-being in populations under pain and pressure.d) Translate linguistic data into artistic expressions through an intercultural, multilingual, production and conference, which create wider impacts through training programmes in each context.Fieldwork will take place in the ODA compliant contexts represented in the large grant either in the existing case studies or through the researchers' languages i.e. Ghana, Uganda, Gaza Strip, Zimbabwe and with new arrival refugees in Glasgow. By using the language story-generating methodologies we will strengthen cultural practices and intangible cultural heritage which is at risk, and mitigate the damage which can occur through a lack of methodological flexibility and sensitivity to the experience of researching multilingually in contexts of conflict or duress. By representing the data generated artistically, we will produce performance and digital materials for use in training and human development activities for both intercultural and local contexts.