This paper analyzes the impact of the hegemonic paradigm of global mental health (GMH) on Portugal. We specifically argue that GMH in Portugal has effected a change of priorities in health policies, favoring the prevention and treatment of common mental disorders to the detriment of the deinstitutionalizing process. Diffused through the media, this model has negative effects, such as the medicalization of social suffering, the reorganization of mental health policy areas according to utilitarian criteria, and the risk of greater invisibility of users with serious psychiatric diagnoses. However, the GMH approach, bringing to the frontline the impact of all social policies on mental health, represents a new opportunity to politically address social suffering. Characterized as a semi-peripheral country, Portugal may be representative of observable trends in similar countries.

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Doença e política do sofrimento social: para uma agenda de investigação crítica nos estudos da saúde e da ciência Maladie et politique de la souffrance sociale: pour un agenda de recherche critique dans les études de la santé et de la science

In the last few decades, the definition of deontological ethics, a well-identified ethical territory in psychiatry, has been the object of increasing concerns. This has been the case in France, where claims of a specific ethical tradition in psychiatry have accompanied the institutionalization of psychiatric ethics and the perceived globalization of an Anglo-American model of mental health care. This study traces the history of the 'French ethical tradition in psychiatry' and its relationship with establishing institutional spaces for ethical decision-making. The 'ethical tradition' thus conceived proves to be functional in terms of preserving the threatened identity of French psychiatry. Nevertheless, this movement also pinpoints impasses that transcend the French context and may provide valuable resources for ethical reflections on mental health on a global scale.

RESUMONum primeiro olhar, a personalidade religiosa da beata Alexandrina Maria da Costa surge como estranha e desconcertante. Este artigo propõe um exercício de compreensão histórica e antropológica que reduz essa estranheza. Sustenta-se que este caso reflete a história de uma comunidade com uma identidade religiosa forte, onde um catolicismo devocional convivia com investidas clericais visando promover uma subjetividade espiritual. Ao mesmo tempo, a medicina e a psiquiatria forneceram novas grelhas de interpretação da experiência religiosa. Este conjunto heterogêneo de elementos formou uma mística vernacular que atribuiu novos significados às entidades liminais próprias do universo religioso do Norte de Portugal. A linguagem da mística vernacular construiu a interioridade de uma experiência que, em sua singularidade, foi sempre fortemente socializada. Palavras-chave: santidade popular; mística; medicina e psiquiatria; liminalidade; Alexandrina de Balasar.ABSTRACT On a first approach, the religious personality of Blessed Alexandrina Maria da Costa strikes us as strange and disconcerting. An exercise in historical and anthropological comprehension, this article reduces such strangeness. It is argued that this case reflects the history of a local community with a strong religious identity, in which devotional forms of Catholicism combined with initiatives on the part of the clergy aiming to promote spiritual subjectivities. At the same time, Medicine and Psychiatry provided new interpretation frameworks regarding religious experiences. From this ensemble of heterogeneous elements eventually emerged a vernacular form of mysticism, within which the traditional liminal entities acquired new meanings. The language of vernacular mysticism constructed the interiority of an experience that, albeit singular, was always strongly socialized.