Psychosocial suffering during life-limiting illness in a Dalit community in India: A multisensory ethnography of patient and caregiver experiences.

This project will explore how historical injustices shape experiences of psychosocial suffering among Dalit (marginalized caste) patients affected by life-limiting illness. It will also examine how these experiences are mediated by local and global health policies and systems.

Dalits comprise 200 million (16.2%, Census 2011) of the Indian population, a country with one-sixth of the global burden of life-limiting illnesses.

Depression, anxiety, psychosis, and delirium are commonly experienced by patients during cancer, HIV, and neurological disorders.

Life-histories of social injustice have been widely linked with poorer mental health outcomes, yet there is a dearth of palliative care research on psychosocial suffering in underserved communities in the Global South.

This interdisciplinary project draws on social anthropology and critical psychology to address this gap through 12 months fieldwork in a Delhi slum.

It adopts the methodology of multisensory ethnography, which seeks to improve understanding of embodied aspects of suffering that are problematically overlooked by language-focused care models.

The findings will advance understandings of the intersections of social injustice and health and offer new insights for health policy and practice to enhance patients' psychosocial wellbeing in historically marginalized communities.

Applicable to oppressed groups globally, the findings will develop sensorially-informed knowledge on how life-histories of social injustice manifest at the end of life, improving recognition of under-addressed needs of patients at the intersection of medical and social suffering.

Ultimately, it / ESRC NINE DTP Postgraduate Studentship Nomination Form / Page 3 of 17 aims to deepen understanding of social determinants of health and strengthen psychosocial palliative care-practice at community and health systems-level in the Global South.