Session: Going Glocal: Intersecting Violence and Mental Health Research in Low Resource Settings across North America, Africa, and Asia (Society for Social Work and Research 24th Annual Conference - Reducing Racial and Economic Inequality)

Violence and mental health are both global, intersecting epidemics, disproportionately affecting groups affected by structural oppressions such as poverty, racism, and gender inequality. Social work research and practice that address these intersecting vulnerabilities often occur in silos of domestic or international social work. Social work education, journals, and conferences tend to reinforce these divides. This symposium seeks to break down artificial barriers between global and local research on violence and mental health to consider a glocal approach to research and practice implications on these widespread issues. This symposium includes research on intersecting violence and mental health from low-resource settings in North America, Africa, and Asia. The first presenter will share a study on children, teacher, and caregiver perspectives on adverse childhood experiences and their connection to mental health problems of children in Uganda. The next presenter will discuss research on violence-affected populations in Mexico, and the need for trauma-informed mental healthcare within primary care settings. The third presenter will share findings from a study that sought to develop nuanced understandings of psychosocial needs related to trauma associated with forced migration and intimate partner violence among refugee women in a U.S. resettlement context. The next presenter will share how structural, institutional, and interpersonal violence impacts lives of women living with serious mental illness in India. Next, the symposium will circle back the United States with a presentation on research with poor inner-city women in New York City with recent histories of depression, intimate partner violence and criminal justice involvement. While symposium participants will focus their presentations on a particular research study and population, they each bring research or practice perspectives that span across settings in both the U.S. and internationally. In addition to glocal learning, the symposium discussion will include the need critically consider intersecting and structural inequalities in this area of research, through feminist and anti-racism approaches. By including studies from both the US and other countries, this symposium seeks to promote South-to-North and North-to-South global learning and analysis in overcoming intersecting violence and mental health.