Decolonizing mental health practice through traditional healing frameworks: Insights from Canada, China, Singapore, and the United States.

Abstract

Decolonial and liberation psychology aims to understand and address the social and epistemic injustices in our mental health systems, practices, and research agenda. To advance this goal, we advocate for deeper engagement with traditional healing systems practiced by various Indigenous Peoples and cultural groups around the world. In this article, we consider examples of Indigenous healing from Canada, China, Singapore, and the United States, to address a central question: What can we learn from these unique Indigenous healing traditions to inform mental health practices globally? Comparison shows that all these practices involve communal healing rituals grounded in spiritual, religious, and cultural knowledge systems related to embodied ways of knowing and that are embedded in social-ecological systems, including kinship, ancestral ties, and filial connections to the cosmology. To support further development of decolonial practice, it is crucial to attend to the complex interactions of cultural identity and sociocultural (relational, communal, political, and spiritual) factors underlying healing traditions in Indigenous communities. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).