Nadia Naomi Mbonde

My project explores how BlMy project explores how Black American women and birthing people (gender-inclusive) narrate their experiences with mental health. How do Black women and birthing people articulate challenges with their mental health? What terminology do they incorporate to narrate such experiences that may adopt, modify, or subvert dominant psychiatric diagnostic labels? To what extent, how, and in what ways does this make their experiences illegible to hegemonic bio-psychiatry? While mental health challenges are relatively more prevalent among Black women across class backgrounds, the literature primarily centers experiences of White women (Matthews et al. 2021; O’Hara & Wisner 2014). My study accounts for the various ways Black women and birthing people navigate the complexities of the Medical and Mental Health Industrial Complex, including voluntary and involuntary engagement and evasion. I explore these questions using a deterritorialized, mixed method, and digital ethnographic approach addressing how the diverse structural barriers within public health systems across various U.S. political landscapes impact how Black birthing people articulate their embodied experiences. I will investigate what difference dissimilar political contexts and state infrastructures make and will invite interlocutors to contribute images and sounds that they capture to represent the structural barriers they face in their respective locations.ack American women and birthing people (gender-inclusive) narrate their experiences with mental health. How do Black women and birthing people articulate challenges with their mental health? What terminology do they incorporate to narrate such experiences that may adopt, modify, or subvert dominant psychiatric diagnostic labels? To what extent, how, and in what ways does this make their experiences illegible to hegemonic bio-psychiatry? While mental health challenges are relatively more prevalent among Black women across class backgrounds, the literature primarily centers experiences of White women (Matthews et al. 2021; O’Hara & Wisner 2014). My study accounts for the various ways Black women and birthing people navigate the complexities of the Medical and Mental Health Industrial Complex, including voluntary and involuntary engagement and evasion. I explore these questions using a deterritorialized, mixed method, and digital ethnographic approach addressing how the diverse structural barriers within public health systems across various U.S. political landscapes impact how Black birthing people articulate their embodied experiences. I will investigate what difference dissimilar political contexts and state infrastructures make and will invite interlocutors to contribute images and sounds that they capture to represent the structural barriers they face in their respective locations.