¿Unas Preguntas? (Rosalía Owes Me Money)
A month and some change in Buenos Aires.
I feel challenged by the research I do here—finding myself running into more questions than answers—par for the course of any good research, in my novice and very humble opinion.
The new and emerging questions I have concern themselves primarily with the fact that most mental healthcare laws have their foundation and roots in international disability rights legislation, primarily the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD)—leading me to ask questions of my friends at Hospital Álvarez about whether they believe or perceive their patients are disabled?
“Do you think your patients are disabled?”
“¿Creés que tus pacientes son personas con discapacidad?”
Most of them answered no (90%).
So, I asked other folks at other hospitals.
And taxi drivers.
And friends.
And family.
“Are people with mental illnesses people with disabilities?”
“¿Las personas con enfermedades mentales son personas con discapacidad?”
Almost everyone, at least on the first pass, answers no.
Which leads me to ask how we can expect mental healthcare laws to safeguard and promote the rights of mad and mentally ill people if we do not perceive them to be disabled?
If mental healthcare laws are established within the world of disability justice, but there is not a shared or common belief/consensus that mentally ill people are people with disabilities, then how do we expect the laws to be truly efficacious? In other words, does our understanding of mentally ill people as “abled” unknowingly but meaningfully remove them, in practice and in theory, from the protections and frameworks of the CRPD and other disability justice campaigns?
I have also started to ask questions concerning “stigma” and the “stigma toward mental illness.”
Is stigma meaningful enough to describe the kind of prejudice and challenges that mentally ill and mad people face?
If mad and mentally ill people are disabled (which many national healthcare laws insist that they are), why do we then insist to attribute their challenges and barriers to living a successful and joyful life to only stigma rather than ableism or a fine concoction of the two?
What are the limitations to describing certain laws and barriers as ableist rather than rooted in stigma? What are the benefits?
And, most importantly, who would reap the rewards of reimagining the stigma toward mental illness as a kind of ableism?
I’ve been doing a lot of reading and have been moving through the motions of life—the ebb and flow of friendships and the endings of.
The books keep me grounded and act as a haven of English for me on days where I feel overwhelmed by the budding and reluctant emergence of a second language.
(If I could, I would pay good money to have someone explain to me why language production feels so easy with some people and so, so challenging with others.)
The last thing I will say here, to keep the blog short and sweet as I don’t really have much to say —is that I am humbled by the amount of kindness and authenticity I have experienced since the start of my grant.
My friends, Ariel, Chiara, Lina, etc., here have given me a community, not the one I expected, but the one I deserve.
Everyone at the hospital is patient with me as I stumble through expressing complex ideas as well as I struggle to solidify a stable schedule.
The baristas, especially at Cuervo, Cruasán, Zarpado, and Borja, create a never-ending community that is interwoven to the rest of the world—one that is familiar and soothing.
Not to mention, everyone in the USA (happy early mother’s day, Mutti) and all the estadounidenses here who keep me feeling understood in my own situatedness and acculturation: especially my newest friend, Megan.
Once again I am applying to graduate school (jajaja).
Rosalía owes me money.
33> Me voy a Mar del Plata <33
un abrazo enorme – chau.
Xx
Sami