The Social Organization of the Right to Mental Health and Development: An Institutional Ethnography
Date
2015-09-03
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Abstract
Indicators of the “right to mental health and development” and the scale up of treatment and services have been at the forefront in the field that is known discursively as “global mental health.” Those advocating for the rights of mentally ill people within this field struggle to produce indicators that can both account for their experiences in practice, while demonstrating accountability within the rules of global development. An international mental health advocacy organization was the site of institutional ethnographic exploration for this inquiry into an international research project and what it contributed as authoritative knowledge about mental health rights. Rather than relying on abstract notions of mental health rights and development, this study illuminates how researchers and funders came together to solve the everyday problems they encountered in advocacy and research for mental health, social inclusion, and the livelihoods of mentally ill people and their care-givers. Exploring the work of practitioners in the field, bureaucrats in aid agencies, and officials in bilateral and multilateral “development” organizations provides a place to begin to explicate how global health governance frameworks are reshaping the field of mental health and development. Specifically, the study explicates (a) a participatory research model and evolving research arrangements between nongovernmental agencies and official organizations, (b) the turn toward indicators for knowing mental health needs and rights, (c) the work of managing research for development results, and (d) measuring and accounting for “mental health rights” in economic measures. At this early stage of global mental health practice, it seems especially important to pay critical attention to how rights-based approaches are coordinated. Many of the concepts of “rights” are taken for granted as beneficial for those experiencing mental illness or distress. It is within their taken-for-granted iteration that they become ideological and cease to represent the interests of frontline mental health knowledge and, instead, carry the interests of the “institution”—in this case the interests of global economic advancement. Uncovering the social organization of knowledge making through institutional ethnographic approaches is a timely critique that points the direction to alternative knowledge and forms of knowledge for mental health and development.
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Social Structure and Development, Mental Health, Nursing
Citation
Jakubec, S. (2015). The Social Organization of the Right to Mental Health and Development: An Institutional Ethnography (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/28381