Experience and research: implications for mental health promotion

Abstract

Mental health promotion aligns its professional actions from the ideological perspectives that influence it and even determine it, mainly by health and disease conceptions. The present critical essay proposed problematizing and discussing aspects of individuals’ experiences that interfere with mental health promotion. Although such actions have been enhanced by the expansion of scientific knowledge linked to the axis of diagnosis, intervention, and care, the scientific technology associated with the field of mental health promotion has produced gaps in the capture of the individuals’ experience; bringing direct or indirect consequences on their living conditions. Therefore, it is crucial to consider the need to broaden the understanding of the individuals’ experience based on the idea that mental health development is not linear but multifaceted, complex, and even contradictory depending on the lens that observes.