Staff profile

I am a medical anthropologist with a longstanding regional focus on Nepal and the Himalaya. My work sits at the nexus of anthropology and psychiatry, exploring how social theory and ethnographic methods can inform clinical practice, and vice versa. My doctoral research traced the expansion of mental health services in Nepal following the 2015 earthquake from the vantage point of a village in the Himalayan foothills. I am currently conducting ethnographic fieldwork for a new project entitled 'Transformation in Mental Health Care: An Anthropological Study of Open Dialogue in the UK's National Health Service’. This project asks how an innovative method of responding to psychiatric crisis developed in rural Finland is being adapted for use in disadvantaged urban populations in the UK, with attention to the implications for families and clinicians. I am also a collaborator on the project ‘Phantoms or Fantasies? Experiences of Loss in Changing Therapeutic Contexts’, which explores orientations toward grief in Himalayan communities affected by disaster (https://phantasies.hypotheses.org/). 

• psychiatric humanitarianism
• global mental health
• anthropology of global health
• Open Dialogue
• anthropology of care
• transcultural psychiatry
• medical anthropology
• Nepal and the Himalaya
• ethnographic methods

Journal Article

• Chase, Liana (2023). The double-edged sword of ‘community’ in community-based psychosocial care: Reflections on task-shifting in rural Nepal. Anthropology and Medicine
• Ahmed, Sonia, Chase, Liana E., Wagnild, Janelle, Akhter, Nasima, Sturridge, Scarlett, Clarke, Andrew, Chowdhary, Pari, Mukami, Diana, Kasim, Adetayo & Hampshire, Kate (2022). Community health workers and health equity in low- and middle-income countries: systematic review and recommendations for policy and practice. International Journal for Equity in Health 21(1): 49.
• Chase, Liana, Shrestha, Sujan, Sidgel, Kripa, Rumba, Sunita, Shrestha, Parbati & Gurung, Dristy (2022). Valuing Community Workers in Global Mental Health: Critical Ethnography of a Psychosocial Intervention in Post-Earthquake Nepal. Studies in Nepali History and Society 27(2): 317-352.
• Chase, L. E. (2021). Psychosocialization in Nepal: Notes on translation from the frontlines of global mental health. Medicine Anthropology Theory 8(1): 1-29.
• Chase, L. E., Gurung, D., Shrestha, P. & Rumba, S. (2021). Gendering psychosocial care: Risks and opportunities for global mental health. The Lancet Psychiatry 8(4): 267-269.
• Chase, L. E., Sapkota, R. P., Crafa, D. & Kirmayer, L. J. (2018). Culture and mental health in Nepal: an interdisciplinary scoping review. Global Mental Health 5: e36.
• Chase, Liana E., Marahatta, Kedar, Sidgel, Kripa, Shrestha, Sujan, Gautam, Kamal, Luitel, Nagendra P., Dotel, Bhogendra Raj & Samuel, Reuben (2018). Building back better? Taking stock of the post-earthquake mental health and psychosocial response in Nepal. International Journal of Mental Health Systems 12(1): 44.
• Chase, Liana E. & Rousseau, Cécile (2018). Ethnographic case study of a community day center for asylum seekers as early stage mental health intervention. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 88(1): 48.
• Chase, Liana E., Cleveland, Janet, Beatson, Jesse & Rousseau, Cécile (2017). The gap between entitlement and access to healthcare: An analysis of “candidacy” in the help-seeking trajectories of asylum seekers in Montreal. Social Science & Medicine 182: 52.
• Chase, Liana & Sapkota, Ram P. (2017). “In our community, a friend is a psychologist” An ethnographic study of informal care in two Bhutanese refugee communities. Transcultural Psychiatry 54(3): 400.
• Chase, Liana E., Welton‐Mitchell, Courtney & Bhattarai, Shaligram (2013). “Solving Tension” coping among Bhutanese refugees in Nepal. International Journal of Migration, Health and Social Care 9(2): 71.
• Liana E. Chase & Damayanti Bhattarai (2013). Making Peace In The Heart-Mind: towards an ethnopsychology of resilience among Bhutanese refugees. European Bulletin of Himalayan Research 43: 144-166.
• Craig, Sienna R., Chase, Liana & Lama, Tshewang Norbu (2010). Taking the MINI to Mustang, Nepal: methodological and epistemological translations of an illness narrative interview tool. Anthropology & Medicine 17(1): 1.