How Our Blindness to Context Harms Patients and Breaks Practitioners: A Conversation With Kamaldeep Bhui

Kamaldeep Bhui is Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Oxford and Honorary Professor at Queen Mary University of London. He is internationally recognized for his groundbreaking work on cultural psychiatry, ethnic inequalities in mental health, and the social determinants of distress. In recognition of his contributions to mental health research and policy, he was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). He has written extensively on the grim reality of minorities facing higher rates of psychiatric detention and coercion. In an era of algorithmic checklists and time-pressured care, Bhui argues for reclaiming biographical listening and patients' own stories and understandings. Without cherishing lived experience, clinicians lose meaning in their work and patients lose agency, trust, and hope. In this interview, we will discuss how our contexts and culture reach deep within us to inform our experience of pain, and to indicate what is abnormal, why we feel distress, and what it means to heal. *** Thank you for being with us to listen to the podcast and read our articles this year. MIA is funded entirely by reader donations. If you value MIA, please help us continue to survive and grow. To find the Mad in America podcast on your preferred podcast player, click here: © Mad in America 2026. Produced by James Moore

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How Our Blindness to Context Harms Patients and Breaks Practitioners: A Conversation With Kamaldeep Bhui is an episode from Mad in America: science, psychiatry and social justice by Mad in America.

This episode is 51:13 long.

This episode was published on Mar 4, 2026.

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