Angé Weinrabe – PHD

Introduction:
Young people today face unprecedented mental health challenges, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and intensified by cultural disconnection, stigma, and resistance to conventional care models. Traditional clinical approaches often fail to address the cultural, symbolic, and sensory dimensions of emotional life. This review explores how youth frame and interpret their mental health experiences through expressive, symbolic, and sonic practices. By situating these practices within culturally grounded frameworks, it advocates for social psychiatry models that embrace social prescription—the practice of referring individuals to non-clinical, community-based resources—as a pathway for more inclusive and responsive care.

Methods:
This narrative review is grounded in the Culture-as-Practice (CAP) framework grounded in Culture and Addiction: Neuroscience and Affective Scaffolding (Weinrabe and Murphy, forthcoming), supported by the complementary Culture-as-Interaction (CAI) model. Literature was sourced from PubMed, PsycINFO, Scopus, Google Scholar, and JSTOR, focusing on publications between 2010 and 2025 that examined youth mental health, culture, and community-based care. Two case studies—Whānau Ora (New Zealand) and Giving Emotions Meaning through Arts and Health (GEMAH) (Pakistan and Australia)—were purposively selected to illustrate the cross-cultural utility and success of CAP-aligned, socially prescribed interventions.

Results:
Participatory arts such as music, storytelling, and ritual emerged as affective technologies that foster emotional regulation, identity coherence, and social connection. Sonic practices, in particular, create shared sensory environments that support co-regulation and belonging. Evidence suggests that these culturally embedded practices—when adopted as forms of social prescription—enhance the clinical relevance of social psychiatry by providing alternative pathways to care for youth who may be disengaged from or underserved by traditional mental health services.

Discussion:
This review argues for a reframing of youth mental health care through participatory, culturally efficacious, and socially prescribed practices. The CAP framework offers a scalable, practice-based approach that integrates emotional development with creative and communal forms of support. Social prescription—whether through arts-based programs, cultural rituals, or community networks—aligns with the goals of social psychiatry by acknowledging the social determinants of mental health and broadening the range of accessible, meaningful care. These insights have significant implications for designing inclusive, trauma-informed interventions across clinical, educational, and community settings.

Angé Weinrabe