Network approach as a path to decolonize mental healthcare

The violent colonial history of psychiatry in Africa prevents individuals from help-seeking. Because of this history, mental health care is now stigmatized, and clinical research, practice, and policy fail to capture the salient features of distress across African communities. This perspective piece presents the network approach to psychopathology as an invaluable tool for decolonizing mental health care. The network approach recognizes mental health disorders not as discrete entities, but rather as dynamic networks made of psychiatric symptoms (called nodes) and the relationships between these symptoms (called edges). This approach can pave a path to decolonizing mental health care by alleviating stigma, allowing context-based understanding of mental health and mental health problems, opening new avenues for low-cost mental health care and empowering local researchers to pioneer context-based knowledge production and treatment.