Olga Lidia Olivas Hernandez

This article discusses how strandedness is produced for asylum seekers and migrants in northern Mexico. We argue that it is fundamental to place these populations’ subjective experiences at the core of the analysis to understand their active stance in making meaning of their circumstances. We suggest a typology for approaching the migration projects that emerge while stranded and discuss migrants and asylum seekers’ active involvement in Civil Society Organizations. We conclude that there is an urgency to recognize that strandedness is a condition requiring that States, CSOs, and scholars reassess how societies could create a space for and with migrants.

Introduction. Migrants could be at increased risk of the psychosocial and mental health consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. Research is needed to assess their needs and the most useful interventions in this regard. Objective. To describe the mental health consequences of the pandemic and lockdown measures among migrants living in shelters in Tijuana, Mexico, during the COVID-19 pandemic, barriers to mental healthcare during this period, and the key elements of psychosocial support provided by civil society organizations (CSOs), as described by shelters' staff. Method. In April-May 2020, we conducted a rapid qualitative study through interviews with persons providing services at eight migrant shelters, complementing the information with data from an ongoing ethnographic project. We situated the results within the levels of the United Nations' Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) pyramid of psychosocial and mental health support. Results. In addition to fear of contagion and economic insecurity, migrants experienced emotional distress associated with hardening migration policies, and the difficulties of having to find shelter in place in non-private spaces. Some CSOs continued or adapted previous psychosocial support activities, helping migrants navigate these issues, but other activities stopped amidst physical distancing measures and because of limited resources. Migrants themselves implemented some group activities. There was a surge of civil society initiatives of online support, but some shelters laeked the technological and other resources to benefit from them. Discussion and conclusion. Migrants require a tailor made response to their mental health needs in the COVID-19 pandemic, such as the one provided by CSOs.

In this article, we call into question recent public health claims that loneliness is a problem of epidemic proportions. Current research on this topic is hindered by an overreliance on limited survey data and by paradigmatic imbalance that delineates the study of loneliness to psychological, cognitive, neuroendocrinological and immunological effects, social functioning, physical health, mortality, and gene effects. The article emphasizes that scientific approaches to the phenomena of loneliness are more appropriately conceived and investigated as inherently matters for social, relational, cultural, and contextual analysis of subjective experience. Studies of loneliness and possible relationships to mental health status require investigations of social, environmental, and institutional structures as well as families, peers, friends, counselors, and health providers. This article takes a step in this direction through examining the lived experience of 35 high school students and their families living under conditions of social adversity in Tijuana, B.C., Mexico, with attention to anxiety and depression. Utilizing ethnographic interviews, observations, and psychological screening tools, we provide an overview for the group and illustrate the interrelations of subjective experience and social environment through a case study. These data reveal the vital role of understandings of loneliness, depression, and anxiety from the perspectives of adolescents themselves. We conclude that future studies of loneliness are best informed by in-depth data on subjective experience in relation to social features to advance understandings within the field of global mental health and allied fields.

Given the current political situation in Mexico, this article discusses the relationship between the state and the religious and spiritual models for treating problematic drug use. The lay nature of the state, specifically in the area of public health, serves as a basis for problematizing the ways in which that state has recognized medical pluralism while denying the religious/spiritual dimension present in various forms of non-biomedical attention. The article analyzes the particular case of religiously oriented rehabilitation centers, which constitute one of the main therapeutic options in Baja California (Mexico), given the nonexistence of alternatives that are public, secular, and free of charge. The case of these centers is paradigmatic for analyzing the ambivalent relationship the state maintains with religious or spiritual therapeutic services. While the state clearly recognizes their existence, and even finances them in some cases, it attempts to ignore the religious basis underlying their treatment model. This article will discuss the advantages and disadvantages resulting from that ambivalent relationship. It will also propose some means for emerging from this situation so as to promote, firstly, a medical pluralism that allows for knowledgeable dialogue among and about differing forms of treatment, and, secondly, recognition of the contributions of religious and spiritually based treatment models in the public health field.

Resumen: Este artículo analiza desde el paradigma del Embodiment, las experiencias corporizadas que viven quienes se someten a un tratamiento de rehabilitación de adicciones en los centros de tipo evangélico pentecostal, en Tijuana, Baja California, México. El estudio está estructurado en tres ejes principales: la transformación de la apariencia física y su relación con la concepción subjetiva del cuerpo; la obediencia al sistema de normas como una tecnología del yo; y la experiencia corporizada de relación con lo sagrado como parte del proceso de sanación. El propósito es discutir el sentido en que dichas experiencias son intersubjetivamente significadas y dan cuenta de un proceso de construcción de subjetividad, que permite la reelaboración del yo en relación al proceso de conversión religiosa como una forma de tratamiento alternativo al padecimiento de la adicción. Palabras clave: Embodiment, experiencia, religión, proceso de rehabilitación. Abstract: This paper analyzes from the paradigm of embodiment, the bodily experiences lived by those who takes part of an addiction rehabilitation treatment, in Evangelical Pentecostal centers, in Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico. The study is structured on three main areas of analysis: the change of the physical appearance and its relation with the subjective body conception; the obey to a system of rules as a technology of the self ; and the embodied experience of relation with the sacred, as part of the religious healing. The objective of this work is to discuss the senses in which such embodied experiences are inter-subjectively signified, and permits the self-objectification and restructuration in relation with the religious conversion process as an alternative way to attend the addiction illness.

En numerosas ciudades latinoamericanas, los centros de rehabilitación han pasado ser parte cotidiana del paisaje. Estos espacios, casi siempre evangélicos y frecuentemente precarios, suelen ser vistos por sus vecinos con sospecha, catalogándolos –­ante el misterio de lo que sucede dentro– como un mal necesario, debido al incremento constante de la farmacodependencia y la insuficiencia de alternativas clínicas para su atención.
¿Cómo surgen los centros de rehabilitación?, ¿por qué predomina la orientación cristiano-evangélica?, ¿qué diferencia existe entre los centros religiosos y los que siguen el modelo de los doce pasos? y ¿cuál es el papel que se otorga a la fe y los rituales religiosos dentro de su modelo terapéutico?
Estas preguntas guiaron un vasto proyecto de investigación –realizado en la región fronteriza de Baja California–, cuyos primeros resultados se presentan en este trabajo. Desde múltiples perspectivas, se abordan aspectos tan diversos como el respeto a los derechos de los internos, la influencia de los contextos culturales en la concepción del adicto, la experiencia de encierro, las características cambiantes del campo religioso en donde surgen los centros, el cuerpo, los proyectos de vida y las diferencias por género, entre otros.
Lejos de pretender una revisión exhaustiva, esta publicación busca contribuir, desde las ciencias sociales, al conocimiento de los modelos de atención terapéutica de los centros de rehabilitación.