Anarchist Re-Imaginations of Mental Healthcare
Today, I attended a great talk by Bonnie Burstow on anarchist re-imaginations of mental health care, entitled ‘Toward a World with Commons and without Psychiatry: an Anarchist Vision’. The talk spoke to a lot of my concerns having worked in the mental health field for the past couple years, but also spoke to some of my aspirations for the provision of mental healthcare in a collective manner. Firstly, Burstow outlined the foundations of the contemporary mental health field and its interventions into the lives of those deemed unwell – parens patriae and the responsibility of the state to protect. Parens patriae (parent of the nation) is the notion that the state – like a ‘patriarch’ – could and should intervene in the lives of people when the state deems it to be in the people’s best interest – as defined by the state. The second foundation is the idea that […]