Psychosis and the Question of Belonging in Racialised Worlds

In white-majority societies, racial minorities are disproportionately affected by psychosis. Epidemiological research highlighted the role of adverse social conditions in these disparities. Yet the lived racial dimension of psychosis — how it unsettles identity and interpersonal relations — remains overlooked. This conceptual gap carries clinical consequences. Justified wariness towards white-majority institutions is often misinterpreted as paranoia. Clinicians report difficulty addressing racial issues in practice, leaving patients to navigate racial and mental health stigma with limited support. This project redresses this gap by focusing on belonging as a neglected but crucial aspect of racialisation, where identity and trust become vulnerable. Drawing on phenomenological psychiatry, migration studies, psychosocial research, and first-person and community perspectives, it develops a novel framework of racialised dwelling to articulate the experiential nature of belonging among racial minorities, and how this can become destabilising in psychosis. The project asks: (1) How is belonging sustained by racial minorities in white-majority contexts? (2) How can racialised dwelling account for lived racial identity and racialised distress? (3) How can racialised dwelling explain the experiential link between racialisation and psychosis? By answering these questions, the project clarifies an overlooked association between racism and psychosis and offers conceptual foundations for future clinical and qualitative research.