What is “accountability” in mental health?

  by Jose Rangel

Since our presence has existed in the mental health system of Santa Clara County, people of color in South County have transformed the mental health system to hold it accountable to their communities.

In San Jose, a city with a dismal ‘human rights’ record, the voices of Chicanos exerting their rights to self-determination are routinely muffled by police violence. The mental illness community struggles with suicide, and the pharmaceutical companies push “prozac” (anti-depressant) on our souls & minds; an outcry of global proportions forces the issue of accountability into the corporate agenda and managed care.

Defending the right to our minds is a survival lesson gleaned from the past fate of Chicanos and peasant peoples in the psychiatric zones across the continent.

Accountability (to our communities) means the pharmaceutical companies, I think need reconciliation. For reconciliation to work a truly searching commission needs to be patterned after South Africa’s and Guatemala’s; this Truth Commission is more concerned with healing the Chicano nation— Aztlan — than incarceratingthe violators. The purpose of such a Truth Commission regarding mental health is to allow the truth to be told by the survivors — and perpetrators— of the stigma horrors imposed on mentally ill people so that the U.S. can begin to heal from the trauma of political violence.

This is restorative justice as opposed to “retributive justice.” This “restorative justice” is a spiritual and psychological approach to the legal/political problem and addresses the historical trauma of an oppressed people.

Like the Pope in Cuba, I neither support capitalism nor communism. Like the Pope in Cuba, I challenge Chicanos to help build a new society.

Chicano politics, during the politics of protest (1965-1972) became more ideological. The politics of protest was rooted in the heritage and history of the Chicano. According to Carlos Cortes, its power and momentum resulted from the historic resistance to oppression and the equally long heritage of societal degradation. Armando Navarro wrote (The Evolution of Chicano Politics):

Not only did some Chicano radicals embrace various forms of Marxism, but also other Chicanos found in their own culture a quasi-ideology — Chicanismo. Although it was an ill-defined and nebulous concept, Chicanismo meant to some Chicanos dignity, self-worth, pride, uniqueness, and a feeling of cultural rebirth. .. Navarro wrote about the Crusade for Justice (ibid.):

The founding of the Crusade for Justice did much to provide direction to the politics of protest. The Crusade was organized by Corky Gonzales, a man who became one of the most influential activist leaders in Aztlan. His influence was especially felt among the barrio youth. His influence in the realm of ideas was felt when he spoke of cultural nationalism and on the creation of a Chicano society based on humanism rather than materialism — Aztlan.

As a point of comment, Carlos Muñoz, Jr. wrote (The Politics of Protestand Chicano Liberation):

The Chicano movement is in the process of transition from the tactics and strategies of the sixties based largely on spontaneous mass protest and ambiguous ideas of cultural nationalism, to serious efforts for the creation, development, and implementation of disciplined organizational structures which can directly challenge the political institutions of the ruling class. Therefore, accountability and the Mental Patients’ Movement are involved in community empowerment. And community empowerment means organization, ideology, funds, and leadership. Furthermore, recovery doesn’t need professional help. Yet recovery from mental illness is done in the context of a supportive climate (community). And, Tomas Almaguer wrote  (Historical Notes on Chicano Oppression): Clearly, then, racial and class oppression in North America have become inextricably intertwined and the racial struggle in the U.S. must become a class struggle as well.