Mindfulness and the cultural psychology of personhood: Challenges of self, other, and moral orientation in Haiti

Abstract

The global spread of mindfulness-based interventions raises some interesting questions regarding the universality and translatibility of key ideas and practices of mindfulness. Based on ethnographic research, this article reflects on one effort to bring ideas and practices of mindfulness-based stress reduction to Haitian mental health practitioners and educators in Haiti. While core concepts of mindfulness-based stress reduction are often assumed to be universal, this analysis suggests that cultural meaning systems and social contexts, and in particular local cultural psychologies of personhood, strongly influenced the meanings that Haitian participants took away from their exposure to mindfulness-based stress reduction. These differences manifested in resistance to individualist concepts self-embedded in the discourse of mindfulness-based stress reduction as well as to its secularism. However, while rejecting an individualistic and amoral self-focus, Haitian participants also re-interpreted mindfulness in new ways that stressed its value for societal and national well-being. The article reflects on the larger questions that surround the making and re-making of meanings associated with well-being as mindfulness-based interventions move across cultural and national borders.

Manifestations of Depression: Self-Perception, Culture, and Body

“…The contradictions show up in our cultural contexts as well. La Roche and Christopher (2008) highlight the weaknesses of a non-culturally sensitive therapy, and Hoffman (2019) highlights how these interventions function differently across cultures. The infinite ways under which self-harm itself is presented in the online space (Arcoverde et al, 2016) suggests that our own methods of care must also be diverse and culturally competent if we wish to make any attempts at theoretical generalization.…”

“…This mismatch between western-based psychology and varying cultures has been demonstrated in other contexts as well. Hoffman’s (2019) work demonstrates one example of this through the documented attempt to spread the practice of mindfulness to teachers and mental health practitioners in Haiti. Although these participants had a positive experience, there were several key differences between what was actually taught and what they interpreted through the lens of the Haitian culture.…”

“…However, participants tended to interpret this as accepting the external world as it exists, rather than internal. They also associated acceptance with the sense of giving up, with one participant stating, “I can’t accept poverty, otherwise I can’t get over it” (Hoffman, 2019, p. 311).…”

Mindfulness for Global Public Health: Critical Analysis and Agenda

“…It is therefore relevant that other observers have offered partly contrasting characterizations of the dynamics of MBSR and/or its offshoots in various settings (e.g., Hoffman, 2019;Islam et al, 2022;Rosch, 2007Rosch, , 2015. Moreover, Crane et al (2015) lamented "a significant imbalance between the large and rapidly expanding outcome evidence base for MB [mindfulness-based] approaches and the surprisingly small empirical literature on the pedagogy by which these effects are arguably created" (p. 1113).…”