When we talk about health, we refer to the conceptualization of the WHO, which, although we can say that it is utopian –by aiming at the well-being of people– encompasses a global vision of the human being. It values aspects such as living conditions, but also ambitions, expectations, social awareness and human dignity.
We are free beings who live with biological devices in an existence mediated by moral, ethical and affective connections with others. This perspective does not reduce the notion of health to the absence of pathophysiological alterations, but introduces a dynamic and mobilizing perspective, in the search for ways to be happy and feel well-being.
When we refer to mental health, we are not only focusing on brain structures and the self-regulatory functions they perform, but also on the life of man who interacts in a specific socioeconomic and emotional context. In this view, suffering and mental health are not exhausted by a reductionist organicism, which forces psychiatry to rebuild its epistemological campus, to safeguard an ethical minimum that incorporates “know-how” and the well-being of the patient.
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Mental is a section of the Observer dedicated exclusively to issues related to Mental Health. It is the result of a partnership with the Luso-American Foundation for Development (FLAD) and the Hospital da Luz and has the collaboration of the College of Psychiatry of the Order of Physicians and the Order of Portuguese Psychologists. It is completely independent editorial content.
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Source: Observadora
