The Political Economy of Mental Illness in South Africa

André J van Rensburg (University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa)

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English

Routledge
31 May 2023

Regional studies; Sociology; Comparative politics; Regional geography; Health & Self-Help

Series: Routledge Studies in Health in Africa

The book describes key socio-political reforms that helped shape post-apartheid South Africa’s mental health system.

The author interrogates how reforms shaped public, community-based services for people living with severe mental illness, and how features of this care has been determined, in part at least, by the relations between actors and structures in the state, private for-profit health care, and civil society spheres. A description of the development of South Africa’s post-apartheid health system, and the contentions that emerge therein, sets the stage for an analysis of the country’s most tragic human rights failure during its democratic period, namely the Life Esidimeni tragedy. The roots of the tragedy are not only framed as a loss of life and dignity as a result of political corruption and administrative mismanagement, but as a power differential that ultimately highlights an unjust system that relegates its most vulnerable citizens to commodities, without voice and without agency. The book concludes that the commodification of severe mental illness has been a product of neoliberal discourses that have shaped the economistic ways in which the post-apartheid South African state have governed poverty and severe mental illness.

This book will be of interest to scholars of health, social and economic policy in South Africa.

By: André J van Rensburg (University of KwaZulu-Natal South Africa)
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm,
Weight: 300g
ISBN: 9780367683290
ISBN 10: 0367683296
Series: Routledge Studies in Health in Africa
Pages: 174
Publication Date: 31 May 2023
Audience: College/higher education , Primary
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

1. Introduction 2. The Governance of Mental Health Care in South Africa 3. Collaboration Between State and Non-State Mental Health Services 4. Collaboration Between the State and Civil Society: An Uneasy Coalition 5. Governance of State and Civil Society Mental Health Care Collaboration 6. When Systems Fail: Life Esidimeni and the Meaning of Justice 7. Neoliberal Mental Health Care in Post-Apartheid South Africa 8. Concluding Thoughts

André J. van Rensburg is a senior researcher at the Centre for Rural Health, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, and a research fellow at the Centre for Health Systems Research & Development, University of the Free State, South Africa.