The production of mental health care: A quilombist community perspective

Abstract

This article presents a community quilombista perspective on the production of mental health care in psychosocial care. It is an ethnographic research conducted in the city of Juazeiro, State of Bahia (Brazil). The text registers part of the story of a black, northeastern and mentally ill woman. Through the ethnographic report, built from the field diary and an interview with a user of the Psychosocial Care Center, it describes an episode that marks her trajectory and moves her relationship with suffering and psychiatrization of life. Under the mark of racism, her claim in defense of life institutionalizes her right to maternity in two ways: obstetric violence and the production of madness. Racism is considered to create and define the suffering, madness, and death of black women. In this context, where race, gender, and class coordinate the lines between life and death, it is fundamental that care and articulation of networks can incorporate "quilombism" as an ethical, aesthetic, political, and community reference, capable of constituting itself as a strategy for psychosocial care.