Playing (with) power in the mental health field

Abstract

The aim of this article is to outline how power is played within a specific community mental health field in Italy and how that play can be ethnographically reconstructed. Through direct participation, together with several patients and psychiatric staff members, in some therapeutic and rehabilitative activities promoted by a Mental Health Center of the Regional District of Umbria, it is possible to observe, in some circumstances, significant aspects of individual and collective agencies, within specific “power relationships.” Particular attention is given to bodies and their movements during the weekly football games played by a group of patients and staff members. In such rehabilitative activity, the conflicts and processes of negotiation, which are the focus of reflection for patients and staff, make it possible to explore ethnographically the relationships between social action, therapeutic projects and emerging practices. These complex interactions put in evidence the role played by some structural contradictions in the definition of current community mental health policies. Finally, the article shows how processes of embodiment have a significant impact in the political redefinition of the field of psychiatry, on the social construction of “mental illness” and on the possibilities for mutual recognition among all the actors involved in the game, including the ethnographer.