Revisiting Goffman: frames of mental health in the interactions of mental healthcare professionals with diasporic Muslims

Despite indications that the mental health of diasporic Muslims is under pressure, some evidence suggests that they are under-represented in established mental healthcare services. Studies indicate that, although diasporic migrants are at higher risk for mental health problems, they do not find their way to established mental healthcare services. This issue has been identified, conceptualised, and approached from a variety of perspectives. Existing scholarship nevertheless provides no in-depth, dynamic understanding of what happens in the interactions between mental healthcare professionals and diasporic Muslims. In this contribution, we discuss and analyse the perspective of professionals providing mental healthcare services in Flanders (the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium). Based on snowball sampling, we conducted 31 in-depth qualitative interviews. We analysed our data according to a directed approach to content-analysis. Inspired by the work of Goffman, and with the objective of revisiting Goffman’s theory on frames in the light of several theoretical sensibilities that inform our empirical material, we attempt to disentangle the frames that professionals use when approaching diasporic Muslims with mental health problems. We discuss the most prevalent frames and identify a biomedical, a resocialisation, and a cultural-difference frame.