Overview

Recently, the theme of mental health has escaped the exclusive domain of Psychiatry to inhabit other theoretical spaces and collective struggles. This has transformed the understanding on the subject, from an essentially biomedical interpretation to a public debate on the social determinants of mental health, including as a human right. This Sharp Talk will be dedicated to reflect on and discuss these paths that are not new, rather, they have been in the limelight of the public debate.

Psychophobias | Tiago Pires Marques, Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra
In this intervention, which has the pandemic as its background, I proceed with two provocations, with the aim of stimulating the debate on some contemporary trends observable in the field of mental health. In the first, starting from the recognition of the paradigm of disability as a fundamental matrix in the plan of human rights, I question this same paradigm for the risk it carries of denying the psychological suffering and the emotional needs of those who live with a psychiatric diagnosis. The second provocation also comes from the observation of the salutary appeal to place human rights at the centre of approaches to mental health. However, when observed in the light of practices that suggest an intensification of medical paternalism is underway, does this discourse not run the risk of becoming the ideology necessary for the reinforcement of the biomedical model? The wars in the psy world around transsexual identities are one of the possible illustrations of this phenomenon.

“Our depression”: experience-reflections from and about mental health | Sílvia Roque, Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra    
This presentation is based on the experience of a depression, during which I realized how the representations of depression and other mental illnesses, in society and among many professionals, are still centred on individual and fundamentally chemical or biological issues. This experience led me to build a self-taught - non-specialised - path on issues related to mental health, psychiatry and psychology, some of which I have been disseminating through a social network page, seeking to reflect on some of the questions around which I will organise my presentation: 1) Who is the object and subject of knowledge about mental illness? What participation do they have and what legitimacy is given to the patients in the construction of their own healing paths? 2) Why is it possible that, in the field of psychology and psychiatry, we continue to ignore how the structures of the world (capitalism, patriarchy/sexism, racism, for example) produce mental illness? 3) What strategies should be developed to view mental health as a collective production and therefore also requiring a collective effort for the transformation of representations and practices around mental health.

This SHARP Talk takes place in collaboration with "Ouvir Vozes" [Hearing Voices], a project by Marionet in partnership with Movimento Ouvir Vozes Portugal [Hearing Voices Movement Portugal], Centre of Social Studies of the University of Coimbra and Radio Aurora - Júlio de Matos Hospital, under the scope of the Art and Mental Health Programme, from the Directorate-General for the Arts.
 

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This activity will be accessible through the Zoom platform and will be limited to number of available places:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89191776228
ID da reunião: 891 9177 6228

We appreciate that all participants keep the microphone muted until the moment(s) of debate. The host of the session reserves the right to expel the participant who does not respect the rules of the room.

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