Mental Health and Otherness: Intersections Between Gender, Race, Class and Age

Based on two decades of research in Brazil and the UK, this book explores the ways in which intersections of gender, race and class affect the positioning of the subject as ’Other’ in discourses of health, and how the positioning of the subject as ’Other’ has implications for health research and mental health practice.

Drawing on feminist, postcolonial and decolonial studies, psychoanalysis and discourse analysis, Mental Health and Otherness examines the experiences of immigrants, drug users and transsexual people in health and mental health settings, and the ways in which stereotypical understandings can affect the subject.

This book is a study of the discursive construction of ideas about health and mental health in the West and the awareness of processes of othering in clinical practice. It will appeal to scholars in psychology, sociology and cultural studies with an interest in mental health, health care and intersectionality.

Ilana Mountian is Post-Doctoral Researcher and Lecturer at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, and the author of Cultural Ecstasies: Drugs, Gender and the Social Imaginary.