Study group on mental health, medical-care, and society

As yet there have been only a few fragmentary records regarding the contemporary history of the movement surrounding the issues of mental disorders and the institutions/policies helping people with mental disorders to survive, and no systematic research on the subject exists. Therefore, the facts of contemporary history of the mentally handicapped as well as of the institutions and policies surrounding their lives are scattered in the narratives of social welfare (and studies on it) or the various accounts appearing in bioethics, history of welfare, or history of governmental agencies, silenced by the dominant ideas of the present norms of each particular scientific field. What we need is to put a stop to this silence and bring to light the fact that the standards of value of the present scientific norms impeded the survival of the aged, people with disabilities, and those substantially differing from what is seen by the society as “normal”, and show how the social activism by such people have opened the possibilities for life and survival.
The aim of this project is to directly go to the sites of the actual struggle revolving around the survival of those with mental disabilities, and conduct fieldworks of the manifold phenomena, representations, and policies related to mental health, medical care, and society, thereby exploring the possibilities for new values. Although certain research on the phenomena, representations, and policies related to mental health has been conducted at Ars Vivendi, we feel that not enough has been done in terms of finding points of intersection between the contemporary history of the movement of the mentally handicapped demanding their fundamental rights for survival on the one hand, and the related institutions and policies on the other, nor in terms of developing the theoretical aspect of the research further. The aim of this study group is to conduct research in this area respecting the points of view of the disabled themselves, respecting the narratives born at the sites of the struggle without entirely self-identifying with them. We strive to conduct research both theoretically and experientially, i.e., being both critical and constructive in our inquiry.