Recursive Mediation and the Limits of Mental Health Knowledge

Seminar presented by Dr Stefan Ecks (University of Edinburgh) as part of the SOAS Anthropology and Sociology Department Seminar Series

The seminar series is funded by a grant from UKRI. SOAS launched its Centre for Anthropology and Mental Health Research in Action (CAMHRA) this year, as a centre that aims to foster collaborations between anthropology and mental health research and practice.

Abstract

This talk introduces recursive mediation as a description of how being in the world actually unfolds. Drawing on Living Value Theory (LVT), it argues that much mental distress originates in embodied and relational misalignments yet is only recognised in clinical settings once it appears in a symbolic, highly articulated form.

Diagnostic categories, metrics, and treatment protocols do not simply register distress; they push the felt world into forms that often fail to reflect how that distress is lived.

The talk shows how recursive mediation helps explain a wide range of empirical puzzles: why diagnostic clarity can intensify rather than relieve suffering, as symbolic labels begin to govern experience; why evidence-based interventions frequently generate resistance and dropout when they overwrite existing modes of coordination; why well-intentioned institutional and global mental health programmes produce iatrogenic harm by demanding full symbolic legibility.

Speaker

Dr Stefan Ecks (University of Edinburgh) 

Registration

The event is free to attend, but external and non-SOAS visitor are required to sign up via the link at the top of the page.

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