November 5, 2021

Drs. Jaswant Guzder and Geoffrey Walcott, presenta session on the emergence of psycho-historiographic cultural therapy in Jamaica. Professor Guzder’s talk is titled “Psycho-Historiographic Cultural Therapy: Reflections on Fred Hickling’s Innovative Group Process Restructuring Collective Experience,” and Dr. Walcott will present, “Overview: Emergence of Psycho-Historiographic Cultural Therapy in Jamaica.” 

Dr. Fred Hickling, renowned Jamaican psychiatrist who passed away in may 2020, initiated psycho-historiographic cultural therapy as a form of intervention and a part of his approach to the deinstitutionalization and decolonization of Jamaica’s large Asylum system, and it was later adapted for the Dream A World Cultural Therapy project, which is a psychotherapeutic intervention of creative art and remedial academic support for high-risk primary school children delivered by a diverse team of mental health professionals and artists designed using large group psychotherapeutic ethnography.

Jaswant Guzder, MD, is a Professor of Psychiatry at McGill University, active in both the Division of Child Psychiatry and the Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry. She is currently on leave as visiting professor in Victoria, working with Indigenous Child and Youth Health on the unceded territories of the Ws’anec’, Songhees and Esquimalt Salish peoples. She is the former Head of Jewish General Hospital Child Psychiatry, Director of Childhood Disorders Hospital, first Director of Fellowship Program in Family Therapy Residency Training, and founding Co-Director of the Jewish General Cultural Consultation Service. She has continued an active role in teaching and training at McGill and as an Associate of McGill School of Social Work. Her research work based at the Jewish General Hospital, Lady Davis Institute is mainly focused on children at risk and cultural psychiatry. She is active in the global health initiatives and training, including the Jamaican Dream a World cultural therapy project for high risk children continuing since 2005 with University of West Indies. Her teaching and training work currently include ongoing  work in India, Nepal, Italy and Jamaica, collaborating with local and McGill partners. Her research and clinical initiatives in global child mental health include numerous articles and book chapters as well as the co-edited volume, Cultural Consultation: Encounter the Other in Mental Health Care and is on the editorial board of Transcultural Psychiatry. Her book in collaboration with the Museo Laboratorio Della Mente was related to her art residency in Rome 2017. As  an artist, clinician and advocate in  mental health work she was awarded the Queen Elizabeth Jubilee Medal.

Geoffrey Walcott, MB.BS, DM Psychiatry, was born in Clarendon, Jamaica and attended Clarendon College where he received the B.O Frazier Reid award for chemistry. He furthered his education at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona, where he received his MB.BS degree in medicine and his DM in psychiatry. He has worked as the Consultant Psychiatrist in charge of Community Mental Health Services for the parishes of Kingston and St Andrew in the South Eastern Regional Health Authority, Jamaica.  He is currently the Consultant Psychiatrist and Clinical Director for Psychotherapy Associates Ltd and a member of the Steering Committee and Director of the Preceptorship program for management of Schizophrenia for Janssen Pharmaceutical Latin America and Caribbean. He is the Co-Principal investigator on a Grand Challenges Canada Grant O334-04 funded research project and subsequent grants from the Ministry of Education transition to scale program; for which he received the Principal’s Award for Most Outstanding Research Activity in 2015. He has published nineteen peer reviewed journal articles, two book chapter as well as served as reviewer for three international journals. He has also presented at clinical conferences locally, regionally and internationally.

The seminar takes place from 10am to 12pm ET, via Zoom.  This session will be recorded.

Zoom meeting: https://harvard.zoom.us/j/99499107521?pwd=YnNCUVFDdEVBV0pvWHJzckxuWVpNUT09
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