Migration and Alienation

How does migration affect the mind? What does it mean to feel estranged, to feel alienated in a new country, a new culture, or even within one's own self? And how can we truly listen to those who live these experiences every day? This volume brings together a wide range of perspectives, from deeply personal narratives by people with lived experience of psychosis to academic reflections on cultural displacement.

Until recently, the psychotic patient has been seen as an outsider, a “stranger”, and this book provides distinct attention to the central theme of the stranger in our society in relation to the stranger in ourselves. Offering compassion, insight, new perspectives and striking testimonials of lived experience, it proposes that this “strangeness” is not only a condition we project onto others, but is also an intrinsic part of ourselves: a necessary encounter with the unfamiliar within that holds the potential to transform. The narratives featured in this book show that psychosis is not simply a set of symptoms but can also be a way of responding to overwhelming conditions, an attempt to make sense of the world. Migration, in both the physical and existential sense, can be a source of both disorientation and creativity.

Essential reading for mental health professionals, service users, family members and anyone interested in the interplay of culture, identity and psychological wellbeing, Migration and Alienation invites readers to rethink how we understand and support those who navigate both inner and outer worlds of change.