Mental health, neurocultures and neoliberal rationality

Abstract

The cerebralization of mental suffering has been pointed out as a type of sociability in which explanations of the etiology and treatment of mental disorders focus on the nervous system, with important consequences for psychosocial strategies of prevention and treatment, as well as for community approaches to mental health. The article explores the relationship between the cerebralization of mental distress, “neurocultures,” and neoliberal rationality, identifying an entanglement
between psychopolitical and neuropolitical apparatuses that underpin individualistic forms of mental health care and public policies that put too much weight on individualization of distress. These apparatuses focus mainly on the “nervousness of life” identified by Minayo, since the historical nexus between cerebralization and individualization of
distress seems to have its conditions of existence from the introduction of emotions and feelings in the private clinics of the bourgeoisie. The need for more complex approaches to mental health phenomena, as well as the prioritization of community strategies for psychosocial care, becomes increasingly urgent as cerebralization becomes part of official discourses that influence public policies. This article seeks to argue that the exclusively neurobiological explanations for psychological distress are closely related to neoliberalism as an economic organization and as a rationality, and points once again to the need to consider social, economic and political relations in mental health care.