Biolegitimacy, rights and social policies: New biopolitical regimes in mental healthcare in Brazil

• Autor(a) principal: Maluf,Sônia Weidner
• Data de Publicação: 2015
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Vibrant
• Texto Completo: http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1809-43412015000100321
• topic: Biopolitics; Biolegitimacy; Mental Healthcare; Gender; Public Policies; Subject

This paper discuss biolegitimacy as an instrument and device for the production of rights, recognition and access to services and care from the state, as a means to demand and conquer rights and as an expression of a new biopolitical regime. Biolegitimacy is articulated with a broader context of political shift, with an emphasis on the processes of pathologization, medicalization or biologization of social experiences, particularly concerning the production of public policies and actions of the state in the field of rights and citizenship. Despite the breadth of the issues that can be addressed through this concept in its formulation by Didier Fassin, the focus of this article is mental health policies in Brazil in the context of Brazil's Psychiatric Reform program, particularly those policies aimed at women. If on one hand the Psychiatric Reform is based on the principles of the human rights of the ill and of psychiatric patients, and on the democratization and universalization of access to healthcare, on the other hand, in various aspects these same policies reproduce the device of biolegitimacy. The focus is the notion of the "life-cycle" of women, a principle widely used in the documents and guidelines mainly in those specifically aimed at women's health.