Three modes of commodification in mental health

Care services, medicalization and self-help

Abstract

This study is ontologically and epistemologically based on Latin American Social Medicine/Collective Health (LASM/CH) movement. It is based on a qualitative methodology of bibliographic review in two phases: in the first, only publications in Spanish were identified in five platforms of academic articles and in the second, the sample was completed with articles in English and Spanish extracted from two other platforms. In the development, the three most common ways in which the mental health of citizens ceases to be a service or a social good and becomes a scarce commodity with a high exchange value are exposed: first, public and private mental health care services; second, the medicalization of mental health through the articulation of Governments, pharmaceutical companies and mental health professionals; third, the trivialization of mental health through self-help or coaching. At the same time that each of these three aspects is developed, their discussion is also carried out, to leave in the conclusions the general balance of the issue. The objective is to demonstrate the commodification of mental health in the local, regional and global dimensions, and to prove that, although it is not new, there has been a radicalization and modernization of this phenomenon in the 21st century, thanks to the advances in the new information and communication technologies (ICT) and the COVID-19 pandemic.