Julio Cesar Villa Palomino

JULIO VILLA PALOMINO, then a graduate student at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, received a grant in April 2021 to aid research on “De-institutionalization Unfolding: The Ongoing Transition to Community Mental Health in Lima, Peru,” supervised by Dr. Elana Bush. This project examined how Peru’s transition to Community Mental Health and the process of psychiatric deinstitutionalization transforms communities. It does it by exploring how residents are recruited into the process of deinstitutionalization, how practices of surveillance mobilized for the care of the mentally ill are incorporated under the notion of community care, and the reshaping of the boundaries between clinic and community. Drawing from participant observation, semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and archival work, this project shows how Community Mental Health relies not only on the work of health providers, but in the active work of community residents. This project examined the challenges and struggles that impoverished residents face when caring for a severely mentally ill relative, as well as for their own mental health. Health providers often face difficulties in providing adequate care as they confront infrastructural and time concerns. Ordinary residents are fearful and anxious of the return of formerly institutionalized clients, the community workers team household visits, and the fact that the psychiatry asylum is no longer containing mental illness.