Advertisement
Khameer Kidia - Empire of Madness: Reimagining Western Mental Health Care for EveryonePresented by Left Bank Books & the Left Bank Books Foundation
Please help us welcome Khameer Kidia, a Rhodes Scholar and Harvard Medical School physician-anthropologist, who will discuss Empire of Madness: Reimagining Western Mental Health Care for Everyone. As a writer, physician, and anthropologist, Kidia has worked on global mental health for the last decade. Rethinking the system using a global approach, Kidia has written "a must-read for everyone interested in a refreshing, even radical, perspective on mental health" (Vikram Patel). Join us for this important conversation.
" Empire of Madness argues that the solution to our mental health crisis is not more psychiatry, but more justice. Khameer Kidia makes the powerful case that what we diagnose as individual illness is often a rational response to structural violence. This is an essential, paradigm-shifting book." --Anne Boyer, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Undying
Kidia will be in conversation with Maxi Glamour. Join us for a book discussion and signing.
Kidia will personalize and sign copies after the presentation! Personalized and signed copies will be available to be mailed anywhere in the country. For personalized copies, please order before noon on March 6th.
Join us at Left Bank Books
Please RSVP for this event
Watch the livestream on Left Bank Books' YouTube Page
This event is possible thanks to the support of individual donations to the Left Bank Books Foundation. Donate today!
Your presence is a gift. When you attend our readings and purchase visiting authors' titles, you help us sustain our events calendar and continue to offer free literary programming to the community. Join us!
About the Speakers
Khameer Kidia is a writer, physician, and anthropologist at Harvard Medical School and University of Zimbabwe. A Rhodes Scholar and 2023 New America Fellow, Kidia has worked on global mental health research, practice, and advocacy for the last decade. His writing has been published in New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet Psychiatry, The New York Times, Slate, Yale Review, and Los Angeles Review of Books. Born in Zimbabwe, Kidia lives between Harare and Washington, D.C.
Maxi's World is a Podcast that looks at theory and its application, bridging the gap between theory and praxis. In dialogue with authors, philosophers, researchers, activists, and politicians, Maxi's World tries to use thinkers to inspire thinking but also action from academia, and city hall to the streets.
Maxi Glamour is an anti-fascist fairy creature studying philosophy, making music and toppling gender norms with wit, whimsy, and grace. Maxi is the 3rd Ward Committeeperson, a Commissioner of the Civil Rights Enforcement Agency (St. Louis), and an award winning multimedia artist that delivers their own brand of arts and entertainment.
About Empire of Madness: Reimagining Western Mental Health Care for Everyone
An urgent rethinking of the Western approach to mental health, which treats the symptoms rather than the exploitative systems causing our distress--by a Rhodes Scholar and Harvard Medical School physician-anthropologist--offering lessons from the rest of the world.
What if the mainstay of mental health care involved cancelling onerous debt, giving poor people free housing, and paying reparations to the descendants of slavery and colonialism? In Empire of Madness, Dr. Khameer Kidia re-evaluates the Western approach to mental health, which medicates symptoms instead of changing the structures that harm the human psyche. A physician and researcher whose own family suffers from the psychological effects of colonialism, Kidia highlights the limitations of the Western mental health model by reporting from the front lines of mental health crises at home, in the clinic, and during a decade of fieldwork.
Clear-eyed and openhearted, Kidia asks the nuanced questions unaddressed by our current mental health model: How do history, culture, and politics shape mental distress? Are hoarding and burnout medical diagnoses or social problems? Why are schizophrenia outcomes sometimes better in poor countries without antipsychotics? Can a traditional healer treat mental illness better than a Western-trained clinician? For those living in poverty, can cash replace pills?
With rigorous research, cutting analysis, and illuminating prose, Kidia invites us to reimagine mental health as a global idea where our wellbeing is mutual and everyone's voice--patients, caregivers, and healthcare workers alike--matters.
Advertisement
Event Venue
399 N Euclid Ave, St. Louis, MO, United States, Missouri 63108, 391 N Euclid Ave, St Louis, MO 63108-1245, United States, Clayton
Tickets
Concerts, fests, parties, meetups - all the happenings, one place.
