Mental Health Act Update: Progress or Regression?

2024-08-31 15:34:30

The basis of all human production, in any sense, is given by the behaviors. Thus, the most sublime or heroic pages that we can find in the history of humanity are those of human behavior.

If you want, since it is a time of intense debate on the subject, the climate change has, whatever the position, an important element in the behaviors, the works of humanity and its response. So do the worst and most abject episodes of humanity.

However, for some strange reason when we talk about something immediate, like the violenceand including the homicidal violencethere is talk of laws, of policies, of security, of social theories, and it becomes an ideological gibberish, but there is never talk of the underlying human behaviors.

It is eventually raised only one distorting byproduct from this, which moves away from understanding and is if in case the crime has some characteristic that calls attention, to take a leap to pathology, that is to say, what happened It must be the result of some pathology. The question “what’s on your mind, on your head”the murderer, circumscribes the product. There we then enter the dead end of the psychopathic personalitiesor maybe even antisocial and eventually think of a loss of contact with reality, of a psychosis of any origin. But the study of behaviors is absentHowever, violent behaviors are a specific model of study in which the different branches that make up the behavioral sciencesperhaps better known under its English name Behavioral (o Behavioural) Science.

“The concept of danger to oneself and to others, when excluded from the discourse, does not magically disappear, but is transferred to society,” said De Rosa Alabaster (Illustrative Image Infobae)

A few weeks ago inside the BOTTOM issued by President Javier Milei, was in a chapter or title, the proposal for the update of the Mental Health Law 26657which has received so much criticism throughout its existence. Various articles in Infobae commented on this. Perhaps the most notable element is that the law, which needs to be modified, regardless of its theoretical structure, has failed to provide the answer that the reality of the mental health raises, or at least in that paradigm of “mental health” excludes the reality of pathology for considering it stigmatizing.

Within this concept of reverse stigmatization, since ignoring something is the best way to effectively stigmatize it, and populate it with imaginaries, is the deny the idea of ​​inherent danger in certain cases of mental pathology and who need a specific approach. The concept of danger to oneself and to others as well, being excluded from the discourse, It does not magically disappear, but rather it is transferred to society.

It is not difficult to see the correlation between a model applied to some behaviors, eventually those that deviate from the norm, the pathologicalwhich are denied in their reality, go in parallel to other behaviors that are externalized in the violence towards others, that is to say, the criminal behavior that make the criminology.

This parallel has led to positions, as we see now around the debate on the Mental Health Law, in which certain groups adopt extreme positions, far from reality or perhaps completely ignoring it. debate far from being scientific is ideologicaland by default ignorant of reality and the knowledge of the sciences that have always studied this.

“Knowledge and studies can no longer be considered in watertight compartments, but rather the correlation between, for example, a mental, cognitive, behavioral structure and its consequences must be understood,” said De Rosa Alabaster (Illustrative image Infobae)

A few days ago, in relation to this, in an interview, I was presented with the idea that these two realities were opposed and could not coexist, if instead of primary mental health care centres, proximity centres, the DNU (and the person speaking) proposed “locking up” people for the rest of their lives. This vision linked to prison asylumor as a proponent of the previous law likened it to a famous case of forced internment for economic purposes, are a thing of the past or eventually a thing of the past. crime, as is the case mentioned. It is to suggest that any person who enters an operating room to be operated on, and will necessarily be anesthetized, such an occasion will be taken advantage of to cause damage of some kind, that is, something is defined by the perversion of that something.

In the case of the criminal conductsomething similar happens. By refusing the scientific and technical study of the subject we approach the ideological which is what gives the results we have, and so the extremes appear, necessarily outside of reality, as the only reality. offender must be punished in the manner closest to the revenge Or on the contrary, it should be understood that it is the consequence of a society of which he is victim.

As we have advocated in various notes, the need to to get out of a partisan, ideological frameworkand make a scientific approach to behaviorsboth in the context of everyday life, as well as in the pathology or in a form of pathology transferred to the social one, which is the crime.

The destigmatizationthe preventive conduct and integration of knowledge They need a paradigm shift in accordance with the demands of reality. One of them is that the knowledge and the studies They can no longer be considered in watertight compartments but rather understand the correlation that, for example, a mental, cognitive, behavioral structure and its consequences.

“There is a need to get out of a partisan, ideological framework and take a scientific approach to behavior, both in the context of everyday life, as well as in pathology or in a form of pathology transferred to the social, which is crime,” described De Rosa Alabaster (Illustrative image Infobae)

A few days ago in the center of Buenos Aires, in the Recoleta neighborhood, a man barricaded himself holding his wife and 6-year-old son hostage on the terrace of a 14th floor apartment. He had 22 criminal records, with all kinds of dysfunctional and dangerous behavior. Yet there it was. Today, thankfully, we are not talking about the death of a 6-year-old child simply because it did not happen.

The child, in turn, due to his “mental health” is especially in a situation of vulnerabilitybut that was not an obstacle, apparently despite all the previous episodes, for her to be living with a dangerous person. Psychological or police theories were outlined, but the reality is that the event occurred in a context in which, like all cases, there were enough elements that merit another study, another reading.

But in its absence perhaps that is the variable in which we move, that of destinationby not giving these types of topics the place and importance they deserve. We continue to fragment them into phrases that are only separated by the story or a theoretical narrative, but which in reality are united.

Until we achieve synthesize the different emerging that they do in the media to the news, in a concept in which a scientific study, in which converge the different sciences that make human behavior, we will continue as the seven blind wise men who could only imagine reality based on the part of the elephant they felt..

Source: INFOBAE