Melissa Chan

Professor Stephen Bezruchka

GH 482, Section AJ
May 13, 2016
Community Engagement Exercise 2: Proposal

For this Community Engagement Exercise, I am planning to facilitate a discussion on stigma

surrounding mental illness and the social determinants of mental health. The event will be held on Friday,
May 20 from 3:30-5:30pm in the Research Commons Red Room C. I am reaching out to the same groups
that I did for the last exercise. Reflecting on the first CEE, this time I would like to allocate more time for
active discussion. I really enjoyed the problems-based case study activity we did in class this week, and
plan to model this CEE after that.

The initial presentation will consist of two components. I will first present the abstract and
conclusions from three research studies concerning the effects of maternal disadvantage and adverse early
life experiences on the development of mental illness:
1. Maselko J, Kubzansky L, Lipsitt L, Buka SL. Mothers affection at 8 months predicts emotional
distress in adulthood. J Epidemiol Community Health. 2011;65(7):621-625.
doi:10.1136/jech.2010.122804.
2. Slykerman RF, Thompson J, Waldie K, Murphy R, Wall C, Mitchell EA. Maternal stress during
pregnancy is associated with moderate to severe depression in 11-year-old children. Acta Paediatr.
2015;104(1):68-74. doi:10.1111/apa.12787.
3. Morgan D, Grant K a, Gage HD, et al. Social dominance in monkeys: dopamine D-2 receptors and
cocaine self-administration. Nat Neurosci. 2002;5(2):169-174. doi:10.1038/nn798.

Secondly, we will watch the film, A Certain Liberation by South Asian film producer, Yasmine
Kabir. This short documentary follows the daily life of Gurudasi Mondol 30 years after she suffered
extremely traumatic experiences during Bangladeshs 1970s Liberation War. I chose this film because it
presents Gurudashis interactions with her community very candidly and leaves the audience to draw their
own interpretations and takeaways. Before the screening, I will ask the audience to think about this
question throughout the film: Based off her interactions with the community, is Gurudasi mentally ill?
The film begins by following Gurudasi as she wanders the streets, yelling and swearing at people,
hitting them with her long stick, and grabbing money straight out of mens pockets. With this initial
observation, my immediate conclusion was that there was something wrong with her. However, it stood
out to me that while some people seemed a bit annoyed by her actions, they all tolerated and allowed her
to behave in this manner; many people were actually very kind and played along, calling her maashi
(aunty) and treating her with great respect. As the film progresses, her monologues slowly reveal how
during the Liberation War, occupying forces murdered her husband and children right in front of her, and
then raped her. Further encounters with the women in her community reveal her need to be a motherly
figure she helps all the women raise their children, and takes comfort in the fact that people call her
maashi, because if they dont call me aunty, who will remember me? I was struck with the
transformation of my impressions of Gurudasi from the beginning to end of the film because it seemed
reflective of the stigma perpetuated in our societies surrounding mental illness. We initially jump to
conclusions based off out-of-context observations that a person is mentally ill, that there is something
wrong about them, and that they are other. But once their history is brought into the picture, we
realize that there is a basis for their behavior, and unfortunately can only then begin to accept them as part
of the community. I appreciate that the film contains no commentary and is essentially a live stream of
Gurudasis encounters, with English subtitles throughout. I hope that its open-endedness prompts
thought-provoking discussion about stigma and understandings of mental health in our communities.

The takeaway handout from this exercise will be a packet with a synopsis of the research studies
presented, as well as prompt questions for the discussion. If we have time at the end, I also hope to be
able to discuss the global shortage of mental health professionals, how stigma might play a role in this
deficit, and how we can work to address this.