Resumen

RESTREPO-ESPINOSA, Maria Helena. Biopolitics: elements for a critical analysis of public mental health in the contemporary Colombia. Rev. Gerenc. Polit. Salud [online]. 2012, vol.11, n.23, pp.39-55. ISSN 1657-7027.

The purpose is to discuss under some premises of Foucault's biopolitics, governmental practices in the field of the contemporary dominium of public mental health. Within this epistemology, I would like to revise the emergence of the device of the Public Policy on mental health attention for forced internal displacement victims at Colombia in the past decade. Under the Sentencia T 025 the Colombian constitutional court obliges the government to recognize the existence of forced internal displacement and states mandatory the provision of mental health attention to victims. I suggest that this dominium of the public policy in mental health for victims of sociopolitical violence is a biopolitic exercise, where the devices mainly used in public mental health such as population and individuals act upon certain groups focalizing interventions. This mediation acts under the naturalization of trauma, vulnerability and risk, and has the final effect of the medicalization of society.

Palabras clave : biopolitics; mental health; public health policy; victimhood; forced internal displacement and health governance; mental health; public health; health public policy; crime victims; health services; health governance.

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