Thinking Upstream by Firouzeh Jafari Jebelli, 2011

Thinking upstream: Immigrant Women’s Mental Health
Upstream thinking, moving upstream, what does it mean? How does it work? By thinking upstream we can identify the root causes of issues and find the best solutions. It helps us to eliminate the causes and prevent the problems to happen. Let me interpret upstream thinking in a metaphoric way. In the picture you see that some leaves have serious problems. One might says it did not have enough water, light or soil. But the problem is actually at the root of the plant. The root is damaged because there wasn’t enough room for it to grow thus, it should be replaced in a bigger vase. The plant represents an immigrant woman and the damaged leaves symbolize the mental health injuries many sustain. But rather than victim-blaming or individualizing the source of the ‘problem’ with individual women, we must think upstream and look to the root cause of mental health injuries. Systemic barriers faced by many new immigrants are more often than not the ‘root cause’ of mental health or spirit injuries, and not individual women.