Masculinitats (in)habitables: Transaccions, gènere i patiment mental entre els adolescents i joves.

Identifier:  TDX:3193

Handle: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11797/TDX3193

Authors:  Cela Bertran, Xavier

Abstract:
The primary goal of this study is to analyze the effects of the cultural construction of masculinity on health / disease (suffering) / care processes of youth socialized as men. The research aims to provide useful knowledge for rethinking the ways in which excessive mental suffering is accompanied, intervened and treated in the medical and educational field. The study draws from a feminist analysis of masculinity, the contributions of men’s studies and from medical anthropology, in order to understand the interaction between gender, mental suffering, age and socioeconomic status. You will find special emphasis on the first three dimensions. The methodology is based on ethnography in the fields of youth and the community focused mental health network. The multiplicity of techniques employed (participant observation, interviews with psychiatrized boys and mental health professionals, focus groups and questionnaires) allow an exhaustive approach to the study object, insofar as combining the ethnography within two community devices with quantitative data. The results of the research show a direct and remarkably explanatory effect of the sex/ gender system, as well as the ways of living, expressing and attending to mental suffering with specific consequences (less demand for help / attention, difficulties in recognition of self-vulnerability and for the creation of support networks, etc.) of masculinity expressed in young men in particular. This reinforces some of the results found in the international scientific literature section that has been reviewed. To understand the interaction of the studied factors, the starting point has been an idea of masculinity in the process of hybridization and, the transactions given between masculine hegemony and subalternity, with continuities and discontinuities- regarding other historical moments. Secondly, it is based on a set of lived experiences (profane knowledge) of the boys that transit the network of mental health devices. In third place, we analyze the overlaps between stigma and masculinity in this field.