Tammy Nyden will present “How Institutional Gaslighting Obstructs Access to Children’s Mental Health Care” at the 4S (Society for Social Studies of Science) 2023 Conference: Sea, Sky and Land: Engaging in Solidarity in Endangered Ecologies in Honolulu, Hawaii November 8-11, 2023.

Abstract: 

The prevailing view that mental health stigma prevents caregivers from seeking needed health care for their children is the basis of outreach programs and anti-stigma campaigns.  This paper examines how an amalgam of mother-blame and mental health stigma structurally functions within healthcare and social service systems to deny care to children.  I argue that this amalgam is the basis of institutional gaslighting through policy and legal code that obscures and perpetuates social injustices against children.  I examine case studies to illustrate how operational narratives epistemically harm caregivers, exploit their labor, and result in the structural medical and social neglect of children.

This work utilizes a relational standpoint theory of caregivers developed through interviews, ethnography, and community participatory research in relation to my work with Mothers on the Frontline, a non-profit organization founded and run by mothers to promote children’s mental health justice and caregiver healing.  This theory recognizes that the intersectional positionality of both the caregiver and the cared for work together to inform whether the caregiver and child’s testimony receive uptake in these systems and the hermeneutical framing these systems give that testimony.  The gender, race, and class of both caregiver and child together play a significant role in who is deemed worthy of care and of punishment.