"Madness and Despair are a Force": Global Mental Health, and How People and Cultures Challenge the Hegemony of Western Psychiatry

Abstract

The author suggests to consider some important hidden connections in Global Mental Health (GMH) discourse and interventions, above all the political meaning of suffering and symptoms, the power of psychiatric diagnostic categories (both Western and traditional) to name and to occult at once other conflicts, and the implicit criticism expressed by so-called local healing knowledge and its epistemologies. These issues, by emphasizing the importance to explore other ontologies, help to understand the perplexity and resistance that GMH and its agenda meet among many scholars and professionals, who denounce the risks of reproducing and globalizing Western hegemonic values concerning health, illness, and healing.

Keywords: Crypto-racism; Hegemonic dimensions of psychiatric diagnostic apparatus; Indocile suffering; “Minor” and “subjugated” (healing) knowledge; “Palimpsest nature” of psychiatric disorders.