SUBJECTIVE PRECARITIES: politicising mental health in contemporary times

Abstract

The article discusses the notion of subjective precariousness in order to contribute to a sociological understanding of mental health problems today. Subjective precariousness is a typical individual condition arising from the transformations of contemporary capitalist societies, which have established and sacralised categories such as uncertainty, instability, adaptation, autonomy, self-realization, provisionality, fluidity, mobility, speed, flexibility and risk. We aim to show that, beyond socio-economic factors that explain the incidence of mental health problems, the concept of life intrinsic to the neoliberal imaginary can contribute to the interpretation of the phenomenon. Initially, we presented how neoliberalism has become a culture, in terms of the production of social values that guide individual ways of life. Next, we analyse how subjective precariousness becomes a social norm against which the individual is urged to confront in isolation. Finally, we highlight alternative and diverse collective experiences that can confront subjective precariousness. In this way, we intend to politicize mental suffering as a social experience, unlike the explanations of psychiatry and neoliberal culture, which tend to reduce it to the individual.