Blogs

Book Review – Migration and Health: Critical Perspectives

August 25, 2023jessicatappinLeave a comment

Written by: Heide Castañeda

London: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-138-49043-7

This book offers a radical rethinking of the field by unsettling conventional ideas of mobility and borders to highlight the ways in which they produce health inequalities. Covering a wide range of topics, the text provides insight through a critical lens, and proposes areas for intervention along with an added emphasis on the need for future research to address the health inequities that affect migrants. It illustrates how a critical perspective can deepen our understanding of the relationship between migration and health, which remains a defining global issue of our century.

The text employs a critical approach to examine the structural conditions of inequality and larger historical and political processes, recognizing that exclusionary bordering practices increasingly occur away from physical points of entry. It posits the concept of migration as complex, tangled and multi-directional and underscores how migrant vulnerability can shape the lives of people in wider communities. Furthermore, it acknowledges diverse and intersectional standpoints, as well as shifting spatial and temporal influences. Chapters include coverage of health in transit; healthcare access and utilization; clinical encounters; communicable disease; labor and occupational health; gender and sexuality; immigration enforcement, detention, deportation; and the effects of forced displacement on refugee and asylum-seeker health.

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Counting the wrong sheep: why trouble sleeping is about more than just individual lifestyles and habits

August 16, 2023jessicatappinLeave a comment

By Mary Breheny and Rosie Gibson

Sleep may seem straightforward – everyone does it, after all. But as many of us know, getting enough sleep is not necessarily a simple task, despite what you might read in the media.

How to sleep “properly” is a favourite topic of self-help articles, with headlines such as “Expert advice to get a good night’s sleep whatever your age” promising the answer to your nocturnal awakenings.

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The unsustainability of the “pay-as-you-go” publishing model

May 12, 2023jessicatappinLeave a comment

By Abel Polese

This blog was originally published at The Research Whisperer on the 7th of March, 2023.

Recently, Zhejiang Gonggong University announced that articles published with MDPI, Frontiers Media & Hindawi, the three largest open access publishers, would not be included in research performance statistics.

Universities have discouraged or banned staff from publishing in individual journals in the past, but this is the first report of whole publisher catalogues being excluded. I’ve seen discussions about whether these journals are worth publishing or whether they should be considered predatory. I’m concerned that the boundary between a predatory approach and the approach of pay-as-you-go journals is blurring.

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Critical health and neurodivergent awareness

March 22, 2023FranciskaLeave a comment

By Kathryn McGuigan

Neurodivergent awareness week internationally was March 13-19 (www.neurodiversityweek.com). This was a week to celebrate neurological differences, to raise awareness of the strengths and challenges that neurodivergent face.

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Moving from mainstream health psychology towards critical health psychology: Reflections of an early career researcher

March 15, 2023jessicatappin1 Comment

By David Healy

I am a final year PhD student at the University of Galway, Ireland, conducting research in psychology and digital health. In this blog, I want to share some reflections about my experience conducting research in an academic environment that foregrounds traditional research perspectives in health psychology and the different challenges I have faced on account of this.

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Insiders, outsiders, and insider-outsiders: Navigating positionality in community-based research

March 1, 2023March 1, 2023FranciskaLeave a comment

By Gloria Fraser

When asked about my sexual orientation I tend to hesitate, offering up an answer ranging from a firm “straight” to a questioning “pretty much straight?”, depending on who I’m with. It’s become a joke amongst my friends—after years of doing research as a (mostly?) straight cisgender woman about rainbow peoples’ experiences and wellbeing, I’ve become less sure of my answer over time. And maybe this is what we’d expect: that the more time we spend thinking about the labels people use to describe themselves, the more our own labels shift and change.

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Carving My Own Space for Critical Psychology in British Columbia

January 18, 2023jessicatappinLeave a comment

By Jem Tosh

“Critical psychology? Oh that sounds so negative, let’s call it ‘reflective psychology’ instead!”

This was the first response I received when I told a psychologist that I was starting a PhD in critical psychology. It was a weird combination of toxic positivity and misunderstanding about what critical psychology actually is. It was a failure to acknowledge that it’s a particular space and perspective ‘within’ and ‘without’ psychology’s disciplinary boundaries (Parker, 1999). So you can’t really go around renaming it just because you don’t like the sound of it.

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Doctors often aren’t trained on the preventive health care needs of gender-diverse people – as a result, many patients don’t get the care they need

November 23, 2022jessicatappinLeave a comment

By Jenna Sizemore

A blank piece of paper, black stethoscope and a black pen are all sitting on a light blue background. — *Photo by Tara Winstead*

Preventive health care – such as cancer screening – is a critical tool in the early detection of disease. Missed screening can result in a missed diagnosis, delayed treatment and reduced chances of survival.

But the medical system is poorly equipped to meet the needs of gender-diverse patients.

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So, you’re new to research impact?

October 27, 2022jessicatappinLeave a comment

By Joann Cattlin, Wade Kelly, Ken Knight, David Phipps.

The impact that research generates in society is a hot topic internationally. It can be a complex topic and poses different challenges depending on whether you are a researcher, research professional, funder, or research user.

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Taking on the mainstream – Our symposium at the EHPS conference

October 4, 2022jessicatappinLeave a comment

By Wendy Stainton Rogers

*Arial view overlooking Bratislavský hrad (Bratislava Castle). Photo by Martin Katler on Unsplash*

Bratislava in Slovakia is a beautiful city, and this was my initial motive for getting to the EHPS 2022 conference. I know it well, having first visited in 1990, not that long after the massive ‘Velvet Revolution’ student protest filled the streets there, following the dismantling of the Berlin Wall a few days earlier. In a matter of weeks the former Soviet states of Eastern Europe overthrew communism – a move made possible by the Russian President, Mikhail Gorbachev, and his policies of perestroika and glasnost (Do look them up if you don’t know them, they paint a very different Russia from Putin’s Soviet Era today).

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Human-Dog Companionship and Wellbeing: Decentring the human in critical health psychology?

August 24, 2022jessicatappinLeave a comment

By Elizabeth Peel

‘We are who we are as much because of our relationships with non-human animals as because of the human ones, and we do ourselves a great disservice – and probably great harm – by denying or ignoring this.’
Podberscek et al., 2000, p. 2

In embarking on a new research adventure we often construct accounts (rationale / scientific justification) for the why, what, and how of the project. These accounts are recipient designed, tailored to the audience – whether that be a funding body, key stakeholder, or curious colleague. I’ve said before that it is important to have a ‘passion project’. The simply labelled Dog Talking and Walking project is currently mine, and I hope to convey the value of, and enthusiasm for, taking connections with canines seriously in this blog (see Haraway, 2003).

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Psychology’s participatory problem and five things you can do right now to fix it!

July 28, 2022FranciskaLeave a comment

By Brett Scholz

couple holding hands — Photo by Marcus Aurelius on Pexels.com

Critical health psychologists generally want to practice acts of allyship through and beyond their work. In this post, Brett Scholz presents a call to go beyond thinking of consumers as participants in your research practice, and to instead ensure you collaborate and engage with consumers in epistemic practices.

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The devil’s in the framing: language and bias

June 22, 2022jessicatappinLeave a comment

By Ella Whiteley

How we say things can be as important as what we say. In this post, Ella Whiteley explores the “framing effect”, its implications for education and research communication and in particular, its salience to discussions of sex and gender.

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International Society of Critical Health Psychology

a global community of members interested in critical health psychology

Book Review – Migration and Health: Critical Perspectives

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Counting the wrong sheep: why trouble sleeping is about more than just individual lifestyles and habits

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The unsustainability of the “pay-as-you-go” publishing model

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Critical health and neurodivergent awareness

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Moving from mainstream health psychology towards critical health psychology: Reflections of an early career researcher

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Insiders, outsiders, and insider-outsiders: Navigating positionality in community-based research

Like this:

Carving My Own Space for Critical Psychology in British Columbia

“Critical psychology? Oh that sounds so negative, let’s call it ‘reflective psychology’ instead!”

Like this:

Doctors often aren’t trained on the preventive health care needs of gender-diverse people – as a result, many patients don’t get the care they need

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So, you’re new to research impact?

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Taking on the mainstream – Our symposium at the EHPS conference

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Human-Dog Companionship and Wellbeing: Decentring the human in critical health psychology?

Like this:

Psychology’s participatory problem and five things you can do right now to fix it!

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The devil’s in the framing: language and bias

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