Critical Ethics on Mental Health and Madness

This book project explores theoretical, epistemological, methodological, and ontological conceptualization of mental health and addiction. This book is to dismantle and examine the discourse surrounding mental health and addiction in ways that pave the way for new perspectives on envisioning the world of mental health and addiction afresh. Imagining the world anew entails recognizing that the current world we inhabit is founded on the notion that individuals grappling with mental health issues and addiction are disposable and broken, requiring salvation from their emotions. Emotions serve as the basis for labeling individuals living with mental health issues and addiction as unworthy and readily disposable. This form of disposability is rooted in a colonial framework, asserting that individuals who experience emotions pose a threat to public life and therefore must be segregated from public spaces. The public sphere becomes reserved for rational thinkers, relegating individuals grappling with mental health issues to the status of private entities deemed unintelligible. This private/public divide must be questioned to explore how this gap could be utilized to acknowledge and account for the lives of individuals living with mental health issues and addiction in intersectional contexts. The book argues that mental health is intertwined with issues of power and influence, used to regulate populations living with mental health issues in violent and traumatizing ways. It examines colonialism's impact while implicating social work practice in the collective trauma faced by Indigenous communities and other marginalized groups in Canada and globally. Operating within a colonial mental health and addiction framework, the book engages mental health discourse in intersectional ways and reflexively, highlighting how gender, race, sexual orientation, immigration, and imperialism intersect to oppress marginalized communities. The manuscript presents alternative approaches to mental health, envisioning it through new ethical lenses rooted in people's values, realities, and histories. Central to these conversations is the illumination of various manifestations of violence on people's lives.