“Back to the city, Mr. Citizen!” — Psychiatric reform and social participation: From institutional isolation to the anti-asylum movement

Abstract

The asylum model produced the exclusion of madness from social life, adopting the principle of therapeutic isolation, which led to the institutionalization of the person with mental suffering and their removal from the city and the social participation, subtracting from them the right to the city and the condition of citizenship. Currently, psychiatric reform in Brazil is one of the most important processes of criticizing the psychiatrisation of madness, promoting a deconstruction of the forms of social exclusion and the debate in society about the citizenship of the subjects in mental suffering and social vulnerability. Several innovative fronts, including work, art, culture, political activism and occupation of the city, have set new possibilities for life and expression for the people, in a new conception of madness and difference, in which the diversity of individuals have the right to the city and social participation.