Care & Context: a creative approach to politicising mental health

通过批评性写作和创造性写作的结合，我的论文旨在将诗歌确立为对心理健康问题政治化的一种可行的干预。世界卫生组织称，抑郁症是全球导致残疾的主要原因……有超过3亿人受到影响...[和]每年有80万人死于自杀(布鲁尼尔)目前治疗精神疾病的主流方法一直局限于个人。有大量的文献详细描述了“精神疾病如何被政治化”(马克·费舍尔)，如何“在[当前的]框架内，个人行为与社会环境脱节”(特里维利)，以及如何“将这些[抑郁和精神疾病]的感觉……归因于我们小时候发生在我们身上的坏事……[或]作为无机化学紊乱的结果”(Cvetkovich)。我的论文的目的是在我们的当代政治时刻重新设置心理健康的背景，让个人受制于缓慢的暴力。我所指的缓慢暴力形式包括但不限于社会不平等、无家可归、社会孤立和福利国家的无益。我将通过这种重新情境化来揭示精神疾病是如何与这些权力关系捆绑在一起的。我将分三个部分写一系列诗歌，通过散文诗、找到的文本的情境主义绕道和抒情散文来避开传统的诗歌形式。特里弗利认识到，“在抑郁的潮湿房间里，话语往往失败，话语崩溃。”如果精神疾病是语言和批判性思维不足的地方，诗歌能否利用这种语言的崩溃，让文字颤抖，获得新的共鸣，并打开新的交流和理解的场所？能否在这些新的交流和理解场所内创造一个空间，以便采取一种处理护理和心理健康的方法，这是个人遭受缓慢暴力的原因？

Through a combination of critical and creative writing, my thesis aims to establish poetry as a viableintervention into the politicisation of mental health issues. The World Health Organisation states that'depression is the leading cause of disability worldwide... with more than 300 million people affected... [and]800,000 people dying due to suicide every year' (Brunier). Current mainstream approaches to mental illnesshave been confined to the individual. There is a wealth of literature detailing how 'mental illness has beendepoliticised' (Mark Fisher), how 'within [the current] framework, individual behaviour is decontextualisedfrom social circumstances' (Trivelli) and how 'it is customary... to attribute these feelings [of depression andmental illness] to bad things that happened to us when we were children... [or] as the result of abiochemical disorder' (Cvetkovich). My thesis aims to recontextualise mental health within ourcontemporary political moment with its subjection of individuals to slow violence. The forms of slowviolence I refer to include but aren't limited to social inequality, homelessness, social isolation, and thedisinterest of the welfare state. I will reveal through this recontextualization how mental illness is bound upwithin these relations of power. I will be writing a sequence of poetry in three parts, eliding traditionalpoetic forms through prose poetry, a situationist-detournement of found text and a lyric-essay. Trivellirecognises that "from the damp room of depression, words often fail, discourses collapse." If mental illnessis a place where language and critical thinking fall short, can poetry harness this breakdown of language,allowing words to tremble, garner new resonance, and open up new sites of communication andunderstanding? Can a space be created within these new sites of communication and understanding for anapproach to care and mental health which accounts for the subjection of the individual to slow violence?