Cultural Care, Mental Health and Psychosocial Care

This book brings together research, intervention experiences, and theoretical-methodological perspectives that incorporate social markers of difference – such as race, gender, social class, generation, and territory – and their symbolic, historical, and sociopolitical dimensions into discussions on culture, care, and mental health. By articulating these different approaches, the work highlights the centrality of cultural care in contemporary psychosocial care, emphasizing its importance for the development of more equitable, sensitive, and responsive practices that address the specificities of individuals and the territories in which they live. Cultural Care, Mental Health, and Psychosocial Care is an original formulation that names a set of emerging experiences in the Global South – notably in Brazil and in other Latin American and Caribbean contexts – that integrate popular and community knowledge with technical expertise to address the processes of social determination of mental health. These experiences bear the marks of the societies and territories in which they are formed: colonial and multicultural histories, social inequalities, and health inequities. At the same time, they are shaped by social and political movements advocating for rights, which foster the production and recognition of situated and shared forms of care within the living environments of populations. The result is a book that offers health professionals, researchers, students, and public health policymakers a set of innovative insights and perspectives from different regions of Brazil and Latin American countries such as Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Panama, and Nicaragua. This work provides critical and culturally sensitive contributions to the field of mental health and psychosocial care, fostering interprofessional and intersectoral dialogues and supporting the transformation of care practices. The original manuscript of this book was written in Portuguese and Spanish and translated into English with the help of artificial intelligence. A subsequent human revision was done primarily in terms of content.