Resilience and Resistance Among Mental Health Practitioners in Niger: A Decolonial Narrative Inquiry

This study explores the relational and narrative dimensions of resilience among mental health practitioners operating in Niger, a context marked by political instability, economic precarity, and under-resourced health systems. Using a decolonial and narrative methodology, the Tree of Life approach facilitated a process of identity re-authoring, enabling participants to articulate personal and collective sources of strength. Rather than viewing these practitioners through a lens of deficit or pathology, our inquiry foregrounded their agentive capacities as cultural knowledge holders, spiritual actors, and relational caregivers. Findings revealed five interconnected thematic domains: the centrality of family and community, social relations as resistance, professional identity as ethical and spiritual vocation, spirituality as an ontological foundation, and the role of joy, hobbies, and social aspirations in sustaining well-being. These narratives challenge Western models that isolate care work and professional development from broader socio-cultural and moral frameworks. Resilience emerged not as an individual trait, but as a collective, ecologically grounded phenomenon rooted in relationality, spirituality, and ancestral wisdom. The Tree of Life offered a culturally resonant structure for practitioners to resist invisibility, reconnect with their histories, and reclaim meaning amid structural violence. This process constituted both a psychological intervention and an act of epistemic resistance against colonial paradigms of care. The study advocates for narrative, relational, and decolonial approaches to supervision and capacity-building, positioning mental health workers not as passive recipients of global health interventions, but as coauthors of local, context-sensitive healing practices. Their stories illuminate a liberatory praxis of care rooted in Ubuntu (I am because you are), memory, and hope.