{"id":229698,"date":"2026-04-01T11:17:52","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T14:17:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/redeentrepares.com\/?p=229698"},"modified":"2026-04-06T21:13:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T00:13:16","slug":"descolonizar-o-olhar-por-que-a-saude-mental-no-sul-global-precisa-de-uma-ciencia-popular","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redeentrepares.com\/en\/descolonizar-o-olhar-por-que-a-saude-mental-no-sul-global-precisa-de-uma-ciencia-popular\/","title":{"rendered":"Decolonizing the Look: Why does mental health in the Global South need a popular science?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For a long time, mental health was dominated by models from the Global North (such as the Recovery movement in the USA and Europe), which, although they have brought important advances such as the focus on autonomy and citizenship, do not always account for the wounds opened by our history in the Global South.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mental Health is Political and Historical<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>While in the North the focus was on individual subjective experience, in the Global South user movements were born intertwined with popular struggles for redemocratization, against military coups, for the end of colonialism and against social inequality. For us, mental health has never been just a matter of \u201cchemical balance\u201d, but of human rights and social justice.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Danger of \u201cExporting\u201d Models <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Many critics warn that movements like the \u201cGlobal Mental Health Movement\u201d (created in 2008) could end up functioning as a new form of colonization. When trying to apply universal formulas based only on Western psychiatry, there is a risk of ignoring racism, local cultural contexts and epistemologies specific to the South. As authors such as Cox and Webb (2015) point out, this automatic transposition can end up holding the individual responsible for their suffering and disregarding the social and structural factors that cause it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The \u201cDecolonial Turn\u201d and Resistance<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>To transform this reality, we need what Nelson Maldonado-Torres calls the \u201cdecolonial turn\u201d. This means decolonizing knowledge and recognizing that colonial structures persist to this day, shaping who lives and who dies \u2014 what Achille Mbembe defines as necropolitics.<\/p>\n<p>Frantz Fanon already taught us that \u201cpsychiatricized\u201d individuals are often led to passively accept norms of sanity that, in fact, are forms of alienation. When we transform social problems into individual issues, we neutralize the capacity for resistance and political struggle. This is what Miranda Fricker calls epistemic injustice: the silencing of the voices of marginalized populations due to a lack of conceptual resources for them to express themselves.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Wisdoms that Heal: Good Living and Ubuntu<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The good news is that the Global South brims with powerful alternatives to the Western paradigm. Key examples are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li class=\"translation-block\"><strong>Well-being:<\/strong> rooted in the indigenous cosmogony of Latin America, it focuses on the interdependence between human beings and nature, prioritizing collectivity and human dignity over material goods.<\/li>\n<li class=\"translation-block\"><strong>Ubuntu:<\/strong> African social ethics based on the premise \u201cI am because we are\u201d. It is a tool of resistance that understands human health linked to the health of the community and the environment.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Both practices promote what Boaventura de Sousa Santos calls an \u201cecology of knowledge\u201d, where scientific knowledge dialogues on an equal basis with popular and ancestral knowledge.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Towards a Popular Science <\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"translation-block\">Betting on decoloniality in mental health is assuming that knowledge must be a collective and emancipatory act. It means breaking with the \u201cabyssal thinking\u201d that makes those on the \u201cother side of the line\u201d invisible and building a pluriversality of narratives.<br>\nIn the Entrepares project, we believe that the partnership between the university and popular knowledge is the way to transform pain into a tool for social change, valuing the \u201cfeeling\u201d subject and the strength of communities.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"my-hr-dashed\" \/>\n<p><strong><i class=\"fa-solid fa-book-bookmark\"><\/i> \u2013 Bibliography<\/strong><br \/>\n<small><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Cox, N., and Webb, L. (2015). Poles apart: Does the export of mental health expertise from the Global North to the Global South represent a neutral relocation of knowledge and practice? Sociology of Health and Illness, 37(5).<\/li>\n<li>Maldonado-Torres, N. (2016). Transdisciplinarity and decoloniality. Society and State, 31(1).<\/li>\n<li>Mbembe, A. (2003). Necropolitics. In Public Culture (Vol. 15, Issue 1).<\/li>\n<li>Fanon, F. (2018). In defense of the African Revolution. International Journal of Physiology, 6(1).<\/li>\n<li>Fricker, M. (2003). Epistemic injustice and a role for virtue in the politics of knowing. Metaphilosophy, 34(1\u20132).<\/li>\n<li>Segato, R. (2021). Critique of coloniality in eight essays: and an anthropology on demand. Bazaar of Time.<\/li>\n<li>de Sousa Santos, B. (2007). Beyond abyssal thinking: From global lines to an ecology of knowledge. New Studies CEBRAP, 79.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><\/small><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Have you ever stopped to think that the way we understand \u201cwell-being\u201d and \u201cmental suffering\u201d may be loaded with a worldview that is not ours?<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":229661,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-229698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artigos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redeentrepares.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redeentrepares.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redeentrepares.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redeentrepares.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redeentrepares.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redeentrepares.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229698\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redeentrepares.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redeentrepares.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redeentrepares.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redeentrepares.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}