Keywords
mental health, law, policy, legal scholars, social justice, exhortation, identity
Abstract
In this two-part paper, the author explores the significance of identity in mental health law and policy In this as in other socio-legal domains, identity functions to consolidate dissent as well as to effect social control. The author asks: where do legal experts stand in relation to the identity categories that run so deep in this area oflaw and policy? More broadly, she asks: is "mentalhealth" working on uson the mental health disabled, legal scholars, all of us-in ways that are impairing our capacity for socialjustice? In the first part of the paper, the author considers the Foucauldian exhortation to undertake a "critical ontology of ourselves" and asks what it would mean to take this curious exhortation personally, with regard to one's mental health. In the second part, which will appear in the next issue of the Dalhousie Law Journal, she builds out from these insights toward a political taxonomy of mental health identities.
Recommended Citation
Sheila Wildeman, "Agonizing Identity in Mental Health Law and Policy (Part I)" (2015) 38:2 Dal LJ 619.
