Citizenship and the human rights of those living with psychiatric diagnoses constitute one of the last frontiers in the struggle for civil rights. To date, most social science and humanities studies focusing on psychiatry, recognizing global trends in mental health, have focused on psychiatric reforms, institutions, classifications of illnesses and the expansion of psychotropic drugs, neglecting the political, ethical and civic dimensions that shape experiences and knowledge about mental suffering and illness. For their part, human rights histories have not addressed the rights of people with psychiatric diagnoses. However, throughout the 20th century we have seen the emergence of movements aimed at defending the full citizenship of these populations, from the anti-psychiatric currents of the 1960s-1970s, to associations, networks and therapeutic alternatives led by (ex-)users and survivors of psychiatry. These movements have been at the origin of new therapeutic experiences that are alternative - or complementary - to biomedical psychiatry. The study of the therapeutic trajectories of users or people seeking emotional and mental balance has also demonstrated the importance of alternative and/or complementary approaches to biomedicine, particularly in the field of spirituality.
The articles to be included in this thematic issue should analyse therapeutic experiences, or those with therapeutic effects, in their specific contexts, problematising the ontological, ethical-political and epistemic dimensions. How can a broad recognition of the therapeutic validity of alternative experiences to the biomedical model contribute to an emancipatory vision of psychiatry and mental health? This is the central question of this thematic issue, which will accept unpublished texts of an empirical nature, or in a more theoretical-methodological register, capable of contributing to the construction of new imaginaries for institutions, practices and rights in psychiatry and mental health. It is also intended to be a space for dialogue between academic knowledge and experiential knowledge (namely that of people with experience of suffering diagnosed by psychiatry). Finally, it also aims to cross global and local perspectives, with an emphasis on the counter-hegemonic epistemologies of Brazil and global activism, giving particular visibility to the narratives of alternative therapeutic experiences to the biomedical model and the struggles for dignity and human rights, namely the role of activists in the emancipatory transformation of mental health.
Keywords: activism; human rights; psychiatry; mental health; therapies.
