C R Montenegro
Biographic Data
| ID | 33161 |
|---|---|
| NAME | C R Montenegro |
| GIVEN NAMES | C R |
| FAMILY NAME | Montenegro |
| SIGNATURE | MONTENEGRO C R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Exeter |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9291-267X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 24 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
A Different Position
Protests are a persistent feature of contemporary urban life, often producing mass injuries through police repression. Yet the role of medical care in these contexts—especially when provided by informal collectives—remains understudied. Drawing on 21 in‐depth interviews with members of volunteer medical brigades during Chile's 2019–2020 Estallido Social, this paper examines how care was improvised, coordinated and transformed under conditions of …
A social determination framework for mental health
BACKGROUND: Mainstream global mental health continues to privilege individual-level risk factors and biomedical approaches and treatments while sidelining the structural forces that shape mental distress. Despite calls for more socially embedded and decolonial approaches, policy and research too often neglect how structural phenomena such as globalization, colonialism, and neoliberal reforms directly drive mental health inequities. MAIN BODY: Dra…
Embrace the tension
box Implementation Science has largely privileged the transfer and scale-up of interventions developed in high-income settings, often sidelining local knowledges and reinforcing postcolonial hierarchies
Engagement and qualitative sociology in health research
This paper argues that sociology’s distinctive value in health research lies not in amplifying experiential accounts but in analysing the social structures and norms that shape them—a contribution often obscured by an assumed alignment between qualitative research and engaged health agendas. Typically rooted in a shared valuation of lived experience and patient voice as credible sources of knowledge, arguments for alignment are often aimed at car…
Researchers’ agency and the boundaries of global mental health
The decolonise global health movement has critically reassessed the field’s historical and political underpinnings, urging researchers to recognise biases and power imbalances through reflexivity and action. Genuine change is seen as the outcome of the researcher’s self-awareness, often leaving the underlying structures of global health—and global mental health (GMH)—in the background. Here, we problematise how expectations around agency and chan…
Psychiatric Experiments with "Community" Under Dictatorship and Authoritarianism
In Chile, a long and oppressive military regime (1973-1990) dismantled emergent initiatives for the deinstitutionalisation of psychiatric care, imposing a neoliberal constitution that opened public services to market forces and limited the state's role in health and social care. After being associated with communism and socialism, community-based mental health work was banned, and socialist psychiatrists were silenced through torture or exile. Ho…
La (de)colonización va por dentro
En este artículo exploramos las contradicciones y conflictos epistémicos, políticos y éticos que los profesionales de la salud mental encarnan en el trabajo tanto con migrantes haitianos como con agrupaciones de usuarios y exusuarios activistas en el contexto del sistema público de salud mental en Chile, marcado por procesos de neoliberalización durante los últimos treinta años. A partir de dos etnografías, argumentamos que el trabajo con ambos g…
Critical reflections on the concept and impact of 'scaling up' in Global Mental Health
The field of Global Mental Health (GMH) aims to address the global burden of mental illness by focusing on closing the 'treatment gap' faced by many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). To increase access to services, GMH prioritizes 'scaling up' mental health services, primarily advocating for the export of Western centred and developed biomedical and psychosocial 'evidence-based' approaches to the Global South. While this emphasis on scala…
What Does “Good” Community and Public Engagement Look Like? Developing Relationships With Community Members in Global Health Research
Community and public engagement (CPE) is increasingly becoming a key component in global health research. The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) is one of the leading funders in the UK of global health research and requires a robust CPE element in the research it funds, along with CPE monitoring and evaluation. But what does “good” CPE look like? And what factors facilitate or inhibit good CPE? Addressing these questions would help ens…
Addressing power asymmetries in global health
The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19AU : PleasenotethatCOVID 19hasbeendefinedasCoro ) pandemic, the Black Lives Matter and Women in Global Health movements, and ongoing calls to decolonise global health have all created space for uncomfortable but important conversations that reveal serious asymmetries of power and privilege that permeate all aspects of global health.
Public Policy Responses to Address the Mental Health Consequences of the Covid-19 Pandemic
Objectives: This paper reviews the mental health policies that have been implemented in Chile in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the international context of countries' responses. Even before the start of the pandemic, there were significant barriers to access mental health services in Chile, coupled with a scenario of nationwide social unrest and protests that questioned the legitimacy of public institutions; now the rapidly worsening outb…
Thinking beyond implementation
Global mental health is a field of research and intervention that aims to improve access to mental health on a global scale.1 A basic tenet in the field is the existence of a large ‘treatment gap’ for most mental disorders, especially in low-income and middle-income countries, and the need to ‘scale up’ interventions through, among other things, ‘task shifting/sharing’ to/with community health workers, traditional healers and peers.2 The rise of …
Communities, health‐care organizations and the contingencies and contradictions of engagement
CONTEXT: Despite a growing interest in service-user involvement in mental health services, the interaction between health institutions and local groups is only beginning to receive attention, particularly in global south settings. OBJECTIVE: Looking at a participatory initiative in Chile, this study explores how, under unfavourable administrative conditions, health organizations approach and work with communities. METHODS: We interviewed policy-m…
Teaching global health from the south
Global health, as a field of research and practice, has grown exponentially over the last decades. While definitions abound, according to a classic conceptualization the field comprises ‘an area fo
Beyond Participation
Although the organisation of mental health service users and ex-users in Latin America is a recent and under-researched phenomenon, global calls for their involvement in policy have penetrated national agendas, shaping definitions and expectations about their role in mental health systems. In this context, how such groups react to these expectations and define their own goals, strategies and partnerships can reveal the specificity of the "user mo…
Are you a radical now?’ Reflecting on the situation of social research(ers) in the context of service-user activism in mental health
The relationship between activism and social research constitutes a longstanding source of debate. In the mental health and disability fields, this tension has specific connotations: User-survivor activism is premised on the priority of first-hand experience over detached, ‘objective’ knowledge. Personal experience is the foundation for the specific and irreplaceable perspective that users and survivors bring upon issues of interest. Considering …
Activism in changing times
The field of community psychology has for decades concerned itself with the theory and practice of bottom-up emancipatory efforts to tackle health inequalities and other social injustices, often assuming a consensus around values of equality, tolerance and human rights. However, recent global socio-political shifts, particularly the individualisation of neoliberalism and the rise of intolerant, exclusionary politics, have shaken those assumptions…
Historicising involvement
In western mental health systems, the involvement of user organisations has become an important dimension of contemporary policy development. But the processes constituting users as a relevant/irrelevant group have received little investigation, especially outside the English-speaking world. Drawing on Luhmann’s theory of society, this article presents a reconstruction of involvement initiatives in mental health policy in Chile between 1990 and 2…
It is not the State's fault that we have a person like this’
Carers' understandings, framed against a background of unmet needs and shaped by a history of unsatisfactory interactions with services and institutions, do not resonate with the principles of the CRPD. We suggest an expanded, relational struggle for rights that acknowledges the role of families and the tensions surrounding the distribution of rights within the family
Trust the process
This article argues that community health psychology's core strategy of 'community mobilisation' is in need of renewal and proposes a new way of conceptualising community health action. Taking the Occupy movement as an example, we critique modernist understandings of community mobilisation, which are based on instrumental action in the service of a predetermined goal. Aiming to re-invigorate the 'process' tradition of community health psychology,…
Trust the process
This article argues that community health psychology's core strategy of 'community mobilisation' is in need of renewal and proposes a new way of conceptualising community health action. Taking the Occupy movement as an example, we critique modernist understandings of community mobilisation, which are based on instrumental action in the service of a predetermined goal. Aiming to re-invigorate the 'process' tradition of community health psychology,…
Activism in changing times
The field of community psychology has for decades concerned itself with the theory and practice of bottom-up emancipatory efforts to tackle health inequalities and other social injustices, often assuming a consensus around values of equality, tolerance and human rights. However, recent global socio-political shifts, particularly the individualisation of neoliberalism and the rise of intolerant, exclusionary politics, have shaken those assumptions…
Critical reflections on the concept and impact of 'scaling up' in Global Mental Health
The field of Global Mental Health (GMH) aims to address the global burden of mental illness by focusing on closing the 'treatment gap' faced by many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). To increase access to services, GMH prioritizes 'scaling up' mental health services, primarily advocating for the export of Western centred and developed biomedical and psychosocial 'evidence-based' approaches to the Global South. While this emphasis on scala…
Psychiatric Experiments with "Community" Under Dictatorship and Authoritarianism
In Chile, a long and oppressive military regime (1973-1990) dismantled emergent initiatives for the deinstitutionalisation of psychiatric care, imposing a neoliberal constitution that opened public services to market forces and limited the state's role in health and social care. After being associated with communism and socialism, community-based mental health work was banned, and socialist psychiatrists were silenced through torture or exile. Ho…
La (de)colonización va por dentro
En este artículo exploramos las contradicciones y conflictos epistémicos, políticos y éticos que los profesionales de la salud mental encarnan en el trabajo tanto con migrantes haitianos como con agrupaciones de usuarios y exusuarios activistas en el contexto del sistema público de salud mental en Chile, marcado por procesos de neoliberalización durante los últimos treinta años. A partir de dos etnografías, argumentamos que el trabajo con ambos g…
Are you a radical now?’ Reflecting on the situation of social research(ers) in the context of service-user activism in mental health
The relationship between activism and social research constitutes a longstanding source of debate. In the mental health and disability fields, this tension has specific connotations: User-survivor activism is premised on the priority of first-hand experience over detached, ‘objective’ knowledge. Personal experience is the foundation for the specific and irreplaceable perspective that users and survivors bring upon issues of interest. Considering …
Trust the process
This article argues that community health psychology's core strategy of 'community mobilisation' is in need of renewal and proposes a new way of conceptualising community health action. Taking the Occupy movement as an example, we critique modernist understandings of community mobilisation, which are based on instrumental action in the service of a predetermined goal. Aiming to re-invigorate the 'process' tradition of community health psychology,…
It is not the State's fault that we have a person like this’
Carers' understandings, framed against a background of unmet needs and shaped by a history of unsatisfactory interactions with services and institutions, do not resonate with the principles of the CRPD. We suggest an expanded, relational struggle for rights that acknowledges the role of families and the tensions surrounding the distribution of rights within the family
Historicising involvement
In western mental health systems, the involvement of user organisations has become an important dimension of contemporary policy development. But the processes constituting users as a relevant/irrelevant group have received little investigation, especially outside the English-speaking world. Drawing on Luhmann’s theory of society, this article presents a reconstruction of involvement initiatives in mental health policy in Chile between 1990 and 2…
Beyond Participation
Although the organisation of mental health service users and ex-users in Latin America is a recent and under-researched phenomenon, global calls for their involvement in policy have penetrated national agendas, shaping definitions and expectations about their role in mental health systems. In this context, how such groups react to these expectations and define their own goals, strategies and partnerships can reveal the specificity of the "user mo…
Are you a radical now?’ Reflecting on the situation of social research(ers) in the context of service-user activism in mental health
The relationship between activism and social research constitutes a longstanding source of debate. In the mental health and disability fields, this tension has specific connotations: User-survivor activism is premised on the priority of first-hand experience over detached, ‘objective’ knowledge. Personal experience is the foundation for the specific and irreplaceable perspective that users and survivors bring upon issues of interest. Considering …
Activism in changing times
The field of community psychology has for decades concerned itself with the theory and practice of bottom-up emancipatory efforts to tackle health inequalities and other social injustices, often assuming a consensus around values of equality, tolerance and human rights. However, recent global socio-political shifts, particularly the individualisation of neoliberalism and the rise of intolerant, exclusionary politics, have shaken those assumptions…
Thinking beyond implementation
Global mental health is a field of research and intervention that aims to improve access to mental health on a global scale.1 A basic tenet in the field is the existence of a large ‘treatment gap’ for most mental disorders, especially in low-income and middle-income countries, and the need to ‘scale up’ interventions through, among other things, ‘task shifting/sharing’ to/with community health workers, traditional healers and peers.2 The rise of …
Communities, health‐care organizations and the contingencies and contradictions of engagement
CONTEXT: Despite a growing interest in service-user involvement in mental health services, the interaction between health institutions and local groups is only beginning to receive attention, particularly in global south settings. OBJECTIVE: Looking at a participatory initiative in Chile, this study explores how, under unfavourable administrative conditions, health organizations approach and work with communities. METHODS: We interviewed policy-m…
Teaching global health from the south
Global health, as a field of research and practice, has grown exponentially over the last decades. While definitions abound, according to a classic conceptualization the field comprises ‘an area fo
Addressing power asymmetries in global health
The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19AU : PleasenotethatCOVID 19hasbeendefinedasCoro ) pandemic, the Black Lives Matter and Women in Global Health movements, and ongoing calls to decolonise global health have all created space for uncomfortable but important conversations that reveal serious asymmetries of power and privilege that permeate all aspects of global health.
Public Policy Responses to Address the Mental Health Consequences of the Covid-19 Pandemic
Objectives: This paper reviews the mental health policies that have been implemented in Chile in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the international context of countries' responses. Even before the start of the pandemic, there were significant barriers to access mental health services in Chile, coupled with a scenario of nationwide social unrest and protests that questioned the legitimacy of public institutions; now the rapidly worsening outb…
What Does “Good” Community and Public Engagement Look Like? Developing Relationships With Community Members in Global Health Research
Community and public engagement (CPE) is increasingly becoming a key component in global health research. The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) is one of the leading funders in the UK of global health research and requires a robust CPE element in the research it funds, along with CPE monitoring and evaluation. But what does “good” CPE look like? And what factors facilitate or inhibit good CPE? Addressing these questions would help ens…
La (de)colonización va por dentro
En este artículo exploramos las contradicciones y conflictos epistémicos, políticos y éticos que los profesionales de la salud mental encarnan en el trabajo tanto con migrantes haitianos como con agrupaciones de usuarios y exusuarios activistas en el contexto del sistema público de salud mental en Chile, marcado por procesos de neoliberalización durante los últimos treinta años. A partir de dos etnografías, argumentamos que el trabajo con ambos g…
Critical reflections on the concept and impact of 'scaling up' in Global Mental Health
The field of Global Mental Health (GMH) aims to address the global burden of mental illness by focusing on closing the 'treatment gap' faced by many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). To increase access to services, GMH prioritizes 'scaling up' mental health services, primarily advocating for the export of Western centred and developed biomedical and psychosocial 'evidence-based' approaches to the Global South. While this emphasis on scala…
Researchers’ agency and the boundaries of global mental health
The decolonise global health movement has critically reassessed the field’s historical and political underpinnings, urging researchers to recognise biases and power imbalances through reflexivity and action. Genuine change is seen as the outcome of the researcher’s self-awareness, often leaving the underlying structures of global health—and global mental health (GMH)—in the background. Here, we problematise how expectations around agency and chan…
Psychiatric Experiments with "Community" Under Dictatorship and Authoritarianism
In Chile, a long and oppressive military regime (1973-1990) dismantled emergent initiatives for the deinstitutionalisation of psychiatric care, imposing a neoliberal constitution that opened public services to market forces and limited the state's role in health and social care. After being associated with communism and socialism, community-based mental health work was banned, and socialist psychiatrists were silenced through torture or exile. Ho…
Embrace the tension
box Implementation Science has largely privileged the transfer and scale-up of interventions developed in high-income settings, often sidelining local knowledges and reinforcing postcolonial hierarchies
Engagement and qualitative sociology in health research
This paper argues that sociology’s distinctive value in health research lies not in amplifying experiential accounts but in analysing the social structures and norms that shape them—a contribution often obscured by an assumed alignment between qualitative research and engaged health agendas. Typically rooted in a shared valuation of lived experience and patient voice as credible sources of knowledge, arguments for alignment are often aimed at car…
A Different Position
Protests are a persistent feature of contemporary urban life, often producing mass injuries through police repression. Yet the role of medical care in these contexts—especially when provided by informal collectives—remains understudied. Drawing on 21 in‐depth interviews with members of volunteer medical brigades during Chile's 2019–2020 Estallido Social, this paper examines how care was improvised, coordinated and transformed under conditions of …
A social determination framework for mental health
BACKGROUND: Mainstream global mental health continues to privilege individual-level risk factors and biomedical approaches and treatments while sidelining the structural forces that shape mental distress. Despite calls for more socially embedded and decolonial approaches, policy and research too often neglect how structural phenomena such as globalization, colonialism, and neoliberal reforms directly drive mental health inequities. MAIN BODY: Dra…
Political science (15 works) · Medicine (11 works) · Psychology (10 works) · Public relations (10 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Mental health (9 works) · Mental Health and Patient Involvement (9 works) · Law (8 works) · Public health (8 works) · Nursing (7 works)