Our research
The Trauma & Global Health Program’s Nepalese team is focusing on four priority research areas:
- Assessment of the mental health impact of political violence in selected rural communities, including issues of poverty, ethnicity, and gender
- Community-based responses to extreme violence and torture: resilience and protective factors
- Development of screening protocols (clinical and epidemiological) for trauma-related disorders for mental illness and disability
- Testing and validation of a clinical and collective intervention protocol in two ethnically heterogeneous populations
Where we work
In Nepal, research will be conducted in four rural regions. Two regions are relatively ethnically homogeneous:
- Kailali district in the south-west comprising mostly Tharu Hindu groups who have traditionally been a bonded-labor group serving high-caste Hindus
- Baglung and Gulmi districts comprising mostly Magar Buddhist groups, who have traditionally lived by subsistence agriculture and horticulture and have undergone significant assimilation to high caste Hindu culture (“Sanskritization”)
Two additional regions are ethnically heterogeneous, comprising a mixture of high caste Hindu, Dalits, and non-Hindu groups:
- Jagarkot in West
- Bhojpur in East