Psychosocial Disability Activism in the Global South: A Radical Path Toward Justice?

Akriti Mehta, a mad, disabled researcher and activist, delves into the transformative potential of psychosocial disability activism in the Global South in her chapter The Radical Potential of Psychosocial Disability Activism in the Global South.

This chapter, part of The Routledge International Handbook of Disability and Global Health, critiques global psychiatry while advocating for an intersectional, justice-driven framework rooted in the lived realities of the Global South.

Drawing from her own experiences with mental health services in India and her work alongside activists and advocates, Mehta challenges the dominance of Western psychiatric paradigms. She reimagines psychosocial disability as a socio-political framework that resists colonial legacies, capitalist exploitation, and systemic oppression while fostering intersectional solidarity and care.

“Fundamental to my research and activist interests,” she writes, “are questions of injustice, of power imbalances, of oppression and exclusion, but also equally of resistance and solidarities, of inclusive and intersectional movement-building, and of creating communities and practices of care.”

Through this lens, Mehta positions psychosocial disability not merely as an identity but as a radical call to collective liberation.

“Psychosocial disability” has emerged as a collective identity that reframes experiences often pathologized by psychiatry—such as mental distress or unusual states of being—into the language of rights and justice. Mehta traces the roots of this movement to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), which was groundbreaking in explicitly recognizing persons with psychosocial disabilities as rights-bearers. However, she argues that true liberation requires an explicit engagement with the systemic forces of colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchy that produce and sustain disability and oppression.

A New Framework of Resistance

Unlike the Global North, where “user” and “survivor” identities have long dominated mental health activism, the Global South’s psychosocial disability movements aim to transcend the confines of medical frameworks.

“There is more to life than battling psychiatrists,” writes Mehta, quoting advocate Bhargavi Davar.

This pivot reflects a desire to engage broader systems of exclusion and oppression—such as poverty, lack of education, and restricted political participation.

These movements have embraced disability paradigms to expand their activism beyond medicine and into education, employment, housing, and community inclusion. By positioning themselves as part of a global disability rights movement, activists have secured important legal protections under the CRPD while forming powerful regional solidarities, such as the Pan African Network of People with Psychosocial Disabilities and TCI Asia-Pacific.

Critiquing the Global Mental Health Agenda

Mehta critiques the Movement for Global Mental Health (MGMH), a Global North-driven initiative to expand psychiatric services in low- and middle-income countries. She aligns with those who see MGMH as a form of “medical imperialism,” exporting Western biomedical models that erase local ways of understanding mental health. Drawing on critical scholars, Mehta warns that MGMH’s narrow focus on economic productivity reduces mental health to a neoliberal calculus, neglecting the sociopolitical roots of distress.

“Psychosocial disability frameworks present alternatives to the North-driven biomedical propagated by MGMH,” Mehta asserts, calling for resistance to the monocultural impositions of psychiatric hegemony.

Beyond Rights: Toward Disability Justice

While rights-based discourses under the CRPD have advanced protections for persons with psychosocial disabilities, Mehta is clear-eyed about their limitations. The rights model frames the state as a benevolent rights-giver, obscuring its complicity in creating impairment and disability through colonialism, capitalism, and state violence.

“Disability rights movements globally have provided much-needed visibility to some disabled persons but have simultaneously neglected the experiences of people at intersecting junctures of oppression.’”

Here, Mehta advocates for Disability Justice, an intersectional framework that centers on the most marginalized: Black, brown, queer, trans, and Indigenous disabled people. Grounded in anti-capitalist, anti-colonial values, Disability Justice seeks systemic transformation, linking psychosocial disability activism to broader struggles for liberation.

“Disability Justice reminds us that practices of everyday care and resistance are inseparable from the work of dismantling oppressive systems,” writes Mehta, pointing to this framework’s potential to reinvigorate psychosocial disability activism with a more radical and inclusive vision.

Toward Collective Liberation

For Mehta, the future of psychosocial disability activism lies in its ability to amplify grassroots movements and form alliances across struggles—feminist, anti-capitalist, anti-militarist, and environmental justice movements.

“Our work must start with a disability but never end with it,” she writes, quoting Dan Goodley in his reflections on the future of disability studies.

Mehta’s chapter is both a call to action and a reminder that the radical potential of psychosocial disability lies not in its conceptualization alone but in its praxis. By drawing from the insights of Disability Justice and centering those most impacted by intersecting oppressions, activists in the Global South can chart a transformative path toward justice.

Akriti Mehta’s analysis of psychosocial disability activism in the Global South echoes broader discussions on rights-based, inclusive approaches to mental health. Her work aligns with critiques of biomedical dominance (see interview with Arroyo and Karter) and calls to center lived experiences, as seen in research advocating for recovery-oriented models like the WHO’s QualityRights initiative and frameworks that challenge coercion and exclusion in mental health practices.

Similar to reflections on the complexities of applying the social model of disability to psychiatric survivor movements, Mehta emphasizes the need for context-sensitive and intersectional approaches. Her focus on justice-driven activism also complements critiques of gaps in meaningful participation by people with psychosocial disabilities in policy-making, highlighting the urgency of centering marginalized voices. Together, these perspectives call for transforming mental health systems through inclusive, rights-based, and justice-centered frameworks.

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Mehta, A. (2024). The radical potential of psychosocial disability activism in the global South. In C. McEwan, M. Grech, & D. Soldatic (Eds.), The Routledge International Handbook of Disability and Global Health. Routledge. (Link)