Mental health and biomedical neoliberalism: can creativity make space for social justice?

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this article, we introduce a creative assessment task developed for postgraduate social work students studying critical perspectives on mental health. We discuss how moving beyond the constraints of text-based assignments generates space for students to explore new ways of thinking about mental health, beyond the limitations of dominant illness-based understandings. Through creativity, the task enables an exploration of social justice in practice, reflexivity, humility, complexity, and multiplicity. Students learn about the value of lived and embodied experience knowledges and the task generates opportunities for paradigm shifts away from biomedical discourses. We argue that the task is itself a subversion of neoliberal knowledge production within a tertiary education context.