Care & Context: a creative approach to politicising mental health

通过批判性和创造性的写作相结合，我的论文旨在建立诗歌作为一个可行的干预到政治化的心理健康问题。世界卫生组织指出，“抑郁症是全球残疾的主要原因。超过3亿人受到影响[和] 800，000人死于自杀每年'（布鲁尼耶）。目前治疗精神疾病的主流方法仅限于个体。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），"在[当前]框架内，个人行为如何与社会环境脱离关系“（特里韦利），以及”这是一种习惯......把这些感觉（抑郁和精神疾病）归因于我们小时候发生的坏事. [or]由于无机化学紊乱的结果“（茨韦特科维奇）。我的论文旨在将心理健康与当代政治时刻重新联系起来，使个人受到缓慢暴力的影响。我所指的慢性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漠不关心。我将通过这种重新语境化来揭示精神疾病是如何与这些权力关系联系在一起的。我将分三部分写一系列的诗歌，通过散文诗，一个情境主义的发现文本和抒情散文省略传统的诗歌形式。特里维利认识到，“在抑郁的潮湿房间里，言语常常失败，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，开辟新的交流和理解场所？能否在这些新的交流和理解场所中创造一个空间，以便采取一种照顾和心理健康的方法，从而使个人遭受缓慢的暴力？

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?