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/). 

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

Journal Article

• Shrestha, P., Limbu, A., Tiwari, K., & Chase, L. E. (2024). What matters for sustainable psychosocial interventions and who decides? Critical ethnography of a lay counselling program in Nepal. SSM Mental Health, 6, Article 100359. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmmh.2024.100359
• Chase, L., Shrestha, P., Datta, G., Forsythe, N., Jain, S., Maharjan, S. M., Mathias, K., Miguel-Lorenzo, X., Ranganathan, S., Shrestha, S., Sidgel, K., Subba, P., Gautam, K., Gurung, D., & Ntow, M. C. (2024). Task-shifting or problem-shifting? How lay counselling is redefining mental healthcare. PLoS Mental Health, 1(1), Article e0000067. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmen.0000067
• Chase, L. (2023). The double-edged sword of ‘community’ in community-based psychosocial care: Reflections on task-shifting in rural Nepal. Anthropology and Medicine, 30(3), 294-309. https://doi.org/10.1080/13648470.2022.2161765
• Mosse, D., Baker, D., Carroll, M., Chase, L., Kloocke, R., Wickremasinghe, K., Cramer, B., Pratt-Boyden, K., & Wuerth, M. (2023). The contribution of anthropology to the study of Open Dialogue: ethnographic research methods and opportunities. Frontiers in Psychology, 14, Article 1111588. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1111588
• Chase, L., Shrestha, S., Sidgel, K., Rumba, S., Shrestha, P., & Gurung, D. (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
• Ahmed, S., Chase, L. E., Wagnild, J., Akhter, N., Sturridge, S., Clarke, A., Chowdhary, P., Mukami, D., Kasim, A., & Hampshire, K. (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), Article 49. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12939-021-01615-y
• Chase, L., Gurung, D., Shrestha, P., & Rumba, S. (2021). Gendering psychosocial care: Risks and opportunities for global mental health. The Lancet Psychiatry, 8(4), 267-269. https://doi.org/10.1016/s2215-0366%2820%2930483-1
• Chase, L. (2021). Psychosocialization in Nepal: Notes on translation from the frontlines of global mental health. Medicine Anthropology Theory, 8(1), 1-29. https://doi.org/10.17157/mat.8.1.5111
• Chase, L. E., Marahatta, K., Sidgel, K., Shrestha, S., Gautam, K., Luitel, N. P., Dotel, B. R., & Samuel, R. (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), Article 44. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13033-018-0221-3
• Chase, L., Sapkota, R., Crafa, D., & Kirmayer, L. (2018). Culture and mental health in Nepal: an interdisciplinary scoping review. Global Mental Health, 5, Article e36. https://doi.org/10.1017/gmh.2018.27
• Chase, L. E., & Rousseau, C. (2018). Ethnographic case study of a community day center for asylum seekers as early stage mental health intervention. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 88(1), https://doi.org/10.1037/ort0000266
• Chase, L. E., Cleveland, J., Beatson, J., & Rousseau, C. (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, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2017.03.038
• Chase, L., & Sapkota, R. 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), https://doi.org/10.1177/1363461517703023
• Chase, L. E., & Bhattarai, D. (2013). Making Peace In The Heart-Mind: towards an ethnopsychology of resilience among Bhutanese refugees. European bulletin of Himalayan research, 43, 144-166
• Chase, L. E., Welton‐Mitchell, C., & Bhattarai, S. (2013). “Solving Tension”: coping among Bhutanese refugees in Nepal. International Journal of Migration, Health and Social Care, 9(2), https://doi.org/10.1108/ijmhsc-05-2013-0001
• Craig, S. R., Chase, L., & Lama, T. N. (2010). Taking the MINI to Mustang, Nepal: methodological and epistemological translations of an illness narrative interview tool. Anthropology and Medicine, 17(1), https://doi.org/10.1080/13648471003602566