Mental health and austerity policies: Between suffering and cruelty

Abstract

The right to mental health is an inclusive right, which covers both the social determinants of health and the right to access timely and appropriate care. However, the government of La Libertad Avanza (LLA) in Argentina, implemented policies that negatively affected both dimensions of this right. In order to understand its scope, in this paper we set out to review research on the impact of economic crises, poverty and unemployment on the mental health of the Argentine population at different socio-historical moments. On that basis, we highlight some of the main austerity policies implemented in the first quarter of the LLA government and study their impacts on the production of psychic suffering, based on the first available scientific, professional and governmental evidence. In relation to care system, we approached the proposal to modify the National Mental Health Law, presented in the first version of the draft law “Bases and Starting Points for the Freedom of Argentines”. This tour allowed us to conclude that the aforementioned austerity policies have imposed an intolerable suffering to a large part of the Argentine population, with serious correlates in their mental health. Moreover, the indifference of the official response to this suffering and the pretended return to a model of asylum confinement, allowed us to frame such policies not only as breaches of the standard of progressivity and non-regression of social rights, but even as cruel treatment prohibited by international law.