"And now José"? Brazilian Mental Health and Psychiatric Reform at the CrossroadsAbstract
This article aims to offer subsidies for continuing the implementation of Brazilian Psychiatric Reform (PR) assumptions in the field of Mental Health (MH), limited to the current moment of anti or counter psychiatric reform and its setbacks. At the same time, we will signal ethical-political horizons for the field, enabling a more comprehensive reading of the conjuncture in which we live and contextualized perspectives of action, mobilization and social transformation. Anchored in predicates of the Marxist tradition (or in dialogue with), we first outline a brief conjuncture analysis, emphasizing the main challenges that permeate Brazilian MH and PR; later, we point out some possibilities for the field; and finally, we discuss the need to submit the Reform and its advances to a new project of sociability, from which it is possible to establish new forms of relationship not only with madness and mental health, but also among all human beings. In this way, we believe it is possible to rescue the radicality of Brazilian PR, as well as the resumption of its revolutionary character, visualizing possible paths and horizons in the face of the current fog that clouds our visions.
Keywords: Mental health; delivery of health care; mental health assistance; public policies; Brazil