Description
In this paper I argue that the discipline of international relations has thus far failed to conceptualise the global politics of mental health outside the traditional research themes of war, conflict, and security. Debates about mental health in international relations literature are usually concerned with either (post)conflict societies or the politics of trauma and rarely discuss the meaning of mundane mental health practices. Through empirical research into the history and contemporary rise of mental health anti-stigma campaigns I demonstrate how mental health politics increasingly follow neoliberal rationales designed to maximise workforce efficiency and lower healthcare costs. I therefore show that everyday encounters with mental health through anti-stigma programmes are meaningful sites for IR inquiry and should be taken seriously. This research draws on a post-structural methodology to interrogate how the discourse employed in anti-stigma campaigns produces neoliberal subjectivities while legitimising psychiatric knowledge as the framework through which western societies continue to comprehend mental illness. My research challenges the ontological bias of IR in the study of mental illness and shifts attention to the significance of putting under scrutiny the political power structures which determine our understanding of what it means to be mentally healthy in a world governed by capitalist logics.
