Digital parrhesia in mental health: the care of the self that overflows into the other

Abstract

Throughout its history, madness has been intertwined with a loss of autonomy and a condition of otherness and unreason. Nowadays, since the psychiatric deinstitutionalization and the rise of psycho pharmaceutical drugs, we find ourselves in the midst of those same notions adapted to the xxi^st century through the idealization of the self, being the fractured self one understood as mad. This leads to those considered as mentally ill being unable to conceive themselves neither as agents of care, nor legitimate actors in their discursive framework. Michel Foucault offers, in this situation, the care of the self (epiméleia heautoû) as a way to recover one’s own sovereignty over the self, exercising a care of the self over the self that, eventually, inevitable overflows towards others. Following these notions, this article seeks delve in the relationship that those considered as mentally ill establish with the care of the others we present a qualitative study in which we apply critical discourse analysis to the life story testimony and the activity in social media of nine participants, all of which with experience in dealing with mental health and its professionals. From the material produced we can draw that those considered as mentally ill extend their care to others through parrhesia —honest speaking— in social media, turning the latter into their main tool of communication in what care in mental health is involved since it allows them a means of communication without them necessarily being presupposed as irrational and incoherent.