Sociology prof co-edits special issue of journal

Mon. Oct. 31, 2016

The Faculty of Arts is very pleased to announce that the special issue of Studies in Social Justice, 10:1, 2016 is now available. Dr. Heidi Rimke, Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology, co-edited this important issue entitled, "Mental Health and Distress as a Social Justice Issue", as Chief Guest Editor.

For the past 18 months, Dr. Rimke has been working with eight sets of scholars who applied her theory of "psychocentrism" to critically analyze multiple contemporary social problems, such as, homelessness as pathology; the social construction of autism as "natural"; the very problematic nature of mental health first aid discourses; sanism or the epistemic discrimination against those labeled "mentally ill"; indigenous youth incarceration and suicide; and, the pathologization of eating patterns of girls and women.

During this time, Dr. Rimke was assisted in the editorial process by two doctoral students, Mandi Gray (UWinnipeg BA Honours graduate) and Lacey Croft. As well, Dr. Jan DeFehr from UWinnipeg's Faculty of Education also contributed to the collection of analytical essays.

Dr. Rimke has been deveoping the theory of psychocentrism over the past twenty years. Her work has received nearly 50,000 document views in 152 countries, and it has been ranked in the top 0.5% of the more than 50 million academics on academia.edu, currently the largest scholar database in the world.