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Winter 2024 Bulletin

Recent æ岹ܲ Issues Explore Mental Health as well as Language & Social Justice in the United States

By
æ岹ܲ Editorial
A detail from Edward Munch’s painting Melancholia. A person sitting on a beach. Curvy blobs of purple, blue, black, and beige mix together to serve as the water meeting the land and sky, as well as nebulous shapes surrounding the person and filling the canvas. They stare down at the water.
Melancholy (1891) by Edward Munch. Oil on canvas, 72 cm × 98 cm.

By æ岹ܲ Editorial

We are all vulnerable to emotional distress. COVID-19 made as much clear, subjecting many to the prolonged pain of isolation, loneliness, job and housing insecurity, and grief. The pandemic increased the prevalence of mental disorders, especially among the young, worsened the substance use epidemic, and created still more barriers to accessing care. But it also increased attention on mental health issues, reducing some of the stigma and discrimination associated with mental illness and enabling more people to share their inner struggles.

The authors of the Fall 2023 issue of æ岹ܲ on “Mental Health,” edited by Arthur Kleinman, view this moment as an opportunity to fundamentally transform our mental health systems. Drawing from psychiatry, neuroscience, public health, public policy, genetics, and social science, the authors identify the tensions, breakthroughs, and gaps in our understanding of mental health. And they develop a social medicine perspective to envision new models of care. This perspective recognizes the social and historical determinants of mental health; reduces the overmedicalization of mental disorders; helps identify which treatments will be effective for which patients; and employs the resources available in every community to help address the mental health crisis.
 

The æ岹ܲ volume on “Mental Health” features the following essays:
 

Preface
Arthur Kleinman

Introduction: How Mental Health Matters
Anne E. Becker, Giuseppe Raviola & Arthur Kleinman

The Missing Piece: A Population Health Perspective to Address the U.S. Mental Health Crisis
Laura Sampson, Laura D. Kubzansky & Karestan C. Koenen

American Gun Violence & Mental Illness: Reducing Risk, Restoring Health, Respecting Rights & Reviving Communities
Jeffrey W. Swanson & Mark L. Rosenberg

Rethinking Psychiatry: Solutions for a Sociogenic Crisis
Helena Hansen, Kevin J. Gutierrez & Saudi Garcia

The Protest Psychosis & the Future of Equity & Diversity Efforts in American Psychiatry
Jonathan M. Metzl

Democracy Therapy: Lessons from ThriveNYC
Gary Belkin

Indigenous Historical Trauma: Alter-Native Explanations for Mental Health Inequities
Joseph P. Gone

Disorders of Mood: The Experience of Those Who Have Them
Kay Redfield Jamison

Mental Health’s Stalled (Biological) Revolution: Its Origins, Aftermath & Future Opportunities
Anne Harrington

The Biology of Mental Disorders: Progress at Last
Steven E. Hyman

Two Sides of Depression: Medical & Social
Allan V. Horwitz & Jerome C. Wakefield

Can Mental Health Care Become More Human by Becoming More Digital?
Isaac R. Galatzer-Levy, Gabriel J. Aranovich & Thomas R. Insel

Empowering the (Extra)Ordinary
Vikram Patel & Atif Rahman

Good Mental Health Care: What It Is, What It Is Not & What It Could Be
Arthur Kleinman & Caleb Gardner

 

The æ岹ܲ volume on “Mental Health” is available on the Ƶ’s website.

 

Top left: A group of elementary-school Cherokee children stand onstage at the New Kituwah Ƶ, Cherokee in North Carolina. Several of them raise their right hand. They wear matching T-shirts with words in the Tsalagi language on the front. Bottom left: High school students sit at tables in their classroom conducting linguistics research. Their teacher and linguist Jonathan Rosa sit among them. The students have brown skin and black hair. Right: A large vertical banner hangs from a street post on Main St
Top left: The Eastern Band of Cherokee immer­sion school, New Kituwah Ƶ, Cherokee, North Carolina, 2014, as featured in the Emmy award–winning film First Language: The Race to Save Cherokee. Photo courtesy of Walt Wolfram. Bottom left: Sophomores at Sequoia High School in Redwood City, California, work with Jonathan Rosa in Stephanie Weden’s class, 2019. Photo by Elisa Niño-Sears, courtesy of Jonathan Rosa. Right: Street banner on Main Street in Miami, Oklahoma, displaying the greetings in the languages of local tribes in Ottawa County, Oklahoma, 2023. Photo by Wesley Y. Leonard.

Linguistic justice is central to social justice. From the concept of “standardized languages”—which many consider essential for writing and speaking in academic settings—to the language choices made in negotiating the administration of social and political justice, language use is highly politicized behavior. But how can we contend with inequalities of race and ethnicity without identifying and addressing explicit and implicit racist language use and bias at an institutional level?

The Summer 2023 issue of æ岹ܲ on “Language & Social Justice in the United States,” edited by Walt Wolfram, Anne H. Charity Hudley, and Guadalupe Valdés, examines the expression and consequences of linguistic biases and suggests how we can integrate linguistic justice into our core values. The authors call for expansive approaches to countering linguistic injustice—in the witness and jury box, at work, in art, in our everyday conversations, and beyond.
 

The æ岹ܲ volume on “Language & Social Justice in the United States” features the following essays:
 

Language & Social Justice in the United States: An Introduction
Walt Wolfram, Anne H. Charity Hudley & Guadalupe Valdés

Language Standardization & Linguistic Subordination
Anne Curzan, Robin M. Queen, Kristin VanEyk & Rachel Elizabeth Weissler

Addressing Linguistic Inequality in Higher Education: A Proactive Model
Walt Wolfram

Social Justice Challenges of “Teaching” Languages
Guadalupe Valdés

Refusing “Endangered Languages” Narratives
Wesley Y. Leonard

Climate & Language: An Entangled Crisis
Julia C. Fine, Jessica Love-Nichols & Bernard C. Perley

Rethinking Language Barriers & Social Justice from a Raciolinguistic Perspective
Jonathan Rosa & Nelson Flores

Black Womanhood: Raciolinguistic Intersections of Gender, Sexuality & Social Status in the Aftermaths of Colonization
Aris Moreno Clemons & Jessica A. Grieser

Asian American Racialization & Model Minority Logics in Linguistics
Joyhanna Yoo, Cheryl Lee, Andrew Cheng & Anusha Ànand

Inventing “the White Voice”: Racial Capitalism, Raciolinguistics & Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies
H. Samy Alim

Linguistic Profiling across International Geopolitical Landscapes
John Baugh

Language on Trial
Sharese King & John R. Rickford

Currents of Innuendo Converge on an American Path to Political Hate
Norma Mendoza-Denton

Liberatory Linguistics
Anne H. Charity Hudley

 

“Language & Social Justice in the United States” is available on the Ƶ’s website.

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