CARE PRACTICES AND ACCESS TO MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES: INSTITUTIONS, PUBLIC POLICIES AND CONTEMPORARY CHALLENGES
Contemporary societal transformations have placed mental health and care at the center of multiple social, political, cultural and institutional debates. Demographic changes, health system reforms, social inequalities, migration, violence, transformations in work, technological innovations, and new ways of understanding well-being have reconfigured how care practices and access to mental health services are organized, experienced, and contested. In this scenario, it is necessary to promote spaces for interdisciplinary dialogue that allow these transformations to be understood from different theoretical, methodological and contextual perspectives.
This symposium aims to bring together research analyzing care practices and access to mental health services as social, historical, cultural and institutional phenomena, attending to the relationships established among public policies, health systems, institutions, care professions, communities, and the experiences of those participating in these processes. It seeks to foster exchange among research that, from different disciplines and approaches, contributes to understanding the tensions, challenges and innovations currently characterizing the organization of mental health care and attention.
The call is directed at researchers, teachers, graduate students, professionals and institutional actors from fields such as psychology, public health, anthropology, sociology, medicine, nursing, social work, geography, philosophy, history, law, political science, and other disciplines interested in the study of care, health and social policy. Empirical research, theoretical developments, historical studies, critical reviews, intervention experiences, and comparative research contributing to the analysis of these processes in different contexts will be welcome.
Thematic lines of interest include, but are not limited to: clinical, community and intercultural care practices; access, barriers, continuity and quality of mental health services; organization, reforms and models of health systems; public policies and governance of mental health; primary care and integrated service networks; work, working conditions and professional identities in the fields of care; experiences of users, families and communities; social participation and community organizations; human rights, gender, diversity and equity in mental health; indigenous peoples, local knowledge and alternative models of care; processes of medicalization, demedicalization and new forms of intervention; digital technologies, telehealth, artificial intelligence and transformations in care; effects of social conflicts, migration and humanitarian crises on mental health; as well as historical, philosophical, phenomenological and critical perspectives on care practices and the organization of services.
The symposium seeks to consolidate an interdisciplinary meeting space that fosters dialogue among different research traditions and contributes to understanding how contemporary transformations are redefining ways of caring for, accessing and guaranteeing mental health in today’s societies.
