Being You(ng): Melancholic Universalism and Working with Diverse Target Groups
- geral09776
- há 3 dias
- 5 min de leitura
Young people are under more stress and pressure than ever before and the number of young people reporting poor mental health in Denmark has increased in recent years. The National Action Plan for Psychiatry of 2018 [1] included a target to reduce the share of young people with mental health disorders by 25 percent by 2025. Adversely, in 2021, that number has increased by 52 per cent among 16-24-year-olds [2]. There is no doubt that youth is struggling with mental health, however, this article wishes to dive deeper into the nuances of those struggles. In this quest, we want to talk about the ‘youth’ target group and how this is defined and perceived.
‘Youth’ is a broad term for a very diverse group struggling with various elements of being young, which are also determined by their socio-economic status, their gender, sexual orientation, race and so much more. We don’t often distinguish these factors of identity, within the target group of ‘young people’, resulting in loss of nuances in research and development of mental health resources.
We are going to zoom out for a second and talk about the phenomenology of the primary subject, when conducting research as well as creating cultural discourse. When we’re talking about “youth” this is supposed to be a quite universal term. However, it often presents itself as something rather specific in our minds. That ‘specific’ will always be determined by a mix of who we are ourselves, as well as who the normative narrative around us has assumed as ‘a young person’. However, we often go on in our research or project work, operating without interrogating these assumptions. What that means for our analysis of target groups is that we are not necessarily identifying their needs accurately, and when it comes to projects like Feeling Alive which concerns itself with mental health and wellbeing it is crucial that we don’t miss the needs of the target groups as that could potentially derail the purpose of the project. Coming back to phenomenology and universal subjects I’d like to elaborate this further by including the theories of Sara Ahmed from her work “Queer Phenomenology” (2015).
Universality is the idea that there is something that pertains to everyone. We often assume the presence of universality when we analyze, research or work with groups of subjects. The assumption here is that when we work with groups of people, even though the group is diverse, there will still be a common ground on which they all stand. The assumption is that even though the particulars may vary in these individuals, the basic human conditions are the same. The universal is full of assumptions, and therefore it contradicts its own nature and can become quite particular, to its own contrary. Universalism coheres a specific order, and thus it is not universal at all; because the universal is precisely that, universal, it cannot embrace the particular and thus conceals its own failure by virtue of its own premise. S. Ahmed writes about the universal as follows: “(…) the universal is a structure not an event. It is how those who are assembled are assembled. It is how an assembly becomes a universe.”. And continues: “It is the emptiness of the promise that is the form of the universal; it is how the universal takes form around some bodies that do not have to transform themselves to enter the room kept open by the universal.” (Ahmed 2015). The universal thereby becomes melancholic to bodies who are not able to enter the room of the universal. The universal becomes melancholic to some, who “have to assert their particulars” while “others have their particulars given general expression.” (Ahmed 2015).
Let’s take these phenomenological observations to a more concrete argumentation. When I mention melancholy here it’s because there are plenty of people who do not have their experience represented in the general expression, and thus, when we take the general expression as the universal, we are forcing those ‘others’ to assert their own particulars. Asserting your particulars can look like having to do additional labor in situations where you’re not supposed to be the expert or having to be hyper vigilant in spaces that are otherwise supposed to be safe spaces. When we do not interrogate assumptions about the universality of subjects, we are automatically asking our target groups, in this instance “youth”, to assert their own particulars. This is not necessarily always a problem, however I will argue that it is when it comes to dealing with vulnerable youth, dealing with mental health and wellbeing.
So what could interrogating our assumptions look like? Interrogating what we think is ‘universal’ can be done through intersectional analysis of the tools and approaches that we are utilizing in our projects and our research. Intersectional approaches are characterised by taking multiple social difference factors into account at the same time. It relies on the idea, that different forms of oppression do not exist in a vacuum, but are interdependent and can be mutually enhancing.
Notes from article: Mood, C., Jonsson, J. O., & Låftman, S. B. (2016). Immigrant integration and youth mental health in four European countries. European Sociological Review, 32(6), 716-729.
Immigrant families who are economically successful may still pursue an assimilation strategy that aims to combine economic integration with cultural preservation (Portes and Zhou, 1993), something that may lead children to experience conflicting demands and generational tension (Foner and Dreby, 2011).
Notes from article: Hamed, S., Thapar-Björkert, S., Bradby, H., & Ahlberg, B. M. (2020). Racism in European health care: structural violence and beyond. Qualitative health research, 30(11), 1662-1673.
The article examines how institutionalized racism in healthcare, conceptualized as “structural violence,” contributes to worsened health outcomes for racialized communities. Structural violence, an invisible yet deeply rooted form of harm, impacts health by embedding inequalities into healthcare systems. These inequalities often manifest in ways that normalize the suffering of marginalized communities, making it invisible both to practitioners and the public.
Institutional racism influences the mental and physical health of young people in racialized groups by diminishing their access to resources and support. This leads to untreated mental health issues, as these communities experience systemic neglect in care and barriers that prevent equitable health access. Structural biases in healthcare also erode trust, discouraging youth from seeking help and exacerbating mental health disparities.
The article details two mechanisms of structural violence: the limitation of access to resources (which silences the distress and needs of marginalized individuals) and the imbalance of power (which compromises the dignity and agency of patients). These structural issues result in poorer health outcomes, reinforcing a cycle where racialized youth face greater risks for psychological and physical health problems that are perpetuated by institutionalized racism.
“In this article, we use structural violence as a theoretical tool to understand how racism as an institutionalized social structure is enacted in subtle ways and how the “violence” built into forms of social organization is rendered invisible through repetition and routinization.“
“In this article, we analyze how racism as an institutionalized social structure is enacted through subtle, invisible practices that are normalized into everyday medical routines, which eventually limit or deny access to basic human needs and a humane quality of life. It can make particular subjects vulnerable, unable to protect themselves, and produce barriers for the individual’s ability to seek specific help in response to this.”
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