Voces y trayectorias
Conversations on Psychiatric DeinstitutionalisationVoces y trayectorias: Conversations on Psychiatric Deinstitutionalisation is an online series of public dialogues with people who have played a meaningful role in shaping, implementing, or reflecting on processes of psychiatric reform and deinstitutionalisation. The series focuses on Latin America—particularly Brazil and Chile—while opening a space for comparative and transnational reflection.
Season 1
Conversations on Psychiatric Deinstitutionalisation | 2025–2026
The first season of Voces y trayectorias brings together eight conversations with policymakers, practitioners, activists, researchers and people with lived experience. Across different trajectories and generations, the conversations explore the histories, achievements, tensions and unfinished challenges of psychiatric deinstitutionalisation and community-based mental health care, with a particular focus on Brazil and Chile.
Multilingual accessibility
Episodes are available with subtitles in multiple languages, including English, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian. Viewers can select their preferred language using the subtitles/CC settings in the video player.
Episode 1: Benedetto Saraceno
Benedetto Saraceno reflects on community-based mental health care and the international development of psychiatric reform. Drawing on his experience as former Director of the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse at the World Health Organization (WHO), the conversation explores the ideas, institutions and political processes that have shaped alternatives to institutional psychiatry.
Interviewers: Delia Da Mosto & Felipe Szabzon
Episode 2: Marcelo Kimati
Marcelo Kimati discusses the challenges and future of psychiatric reform and community-based mental health care in Brazil. The conversation draws on his role as Director of Mental Health, Alcohol and Other Drugs at Brazil’s Ministry of Health to consider contemporary policy challenges and the continuing development of Brazil’s psychiatric reform.
Interviewers: Cristian Montenegro & Felipe Szabzon
Episode 3: Mauricio Gómez and Dr Sebastián Prieto
Mauricio Gómez Chamorro and Sebastián Prieto discuss the historical development and implementation of psychiatric reform in Chile. The conversation explores the trajectory of psychiatric deinstitutionalisation, transformations in institutional care, the expansion of community-based mental health services, and the political and ethical challenges facing reform today.
Interviewers: Sofía Bowen & Cristian Montenegro
Episode 4: Lorena Berríos Ibacache & Dariel Jara Sierra
Lorena Berríos Ibacache and Dariel Jara Sierra explore psychiatric deinstitutionalisation from the perspectives of activism, lived experience and community work. Their conversation considers participation, art and collective care, and the challenges and possibilities of transforming mental health care in Chile and Latin America.
Interviewers: Sofía Bowen & Cristian Montenegro
Episode 5: Fabiane Valmore
Fabiane Valmore reflects on Brazil’s anti-asylum movement, public participation, and the relationship between science, art, culture and mental health. Drawing on her work as a sociologist, political scientist and activist, the conversation explores user participation, anti-asylum struggles and the continuing politics of psychiatric deinstitutionalisation in Brazil and beyond.
Interviewers: Delia Da Mosto & Cristian Montenegro
Episode 6: Claudia Braga & Fernanda Nicácio
Claudia Braga and Fernanda Nicácio reflect on the contemporary challenges facing psychiatric reform in Brazil. Drawing on their extensive experience in public policy, community mental health and deinstitutionalisation, the conversation considers community-based services, human rights, the international circulation of reform ideas, and ongoing tensions in processes of psychiatric deinstitutionalisation.
Interviewers: Delia Da Mosto & Felipe Szabzon
Episode 7: Rachel Gouveia & Ueslei Solaterrar
Special in-person edition
Rachel Gouveia and Ueslei Solaterrar explore the relationships between psychiatric reform, race and social justice in Brazil. The conversation examines how racism, gender, intersectionality and wider structures of inequality shape experiences of mental distress, institutionalisation and care, and considers the role of Black feminist, anti-racist and anti-colonial perspectives in contemporary psychiatric reform.
Interviewers: Delia Da Mosto & Felipe Szabzon
Episode 8: Esteban Encina & Margarita Machuca
Special in-person edition
Esteban Encina and Margarita Machuca discuss community participation, integrated care and mental health reform in Chile. The conversation explores citizen participation, territorial care networks, hospital liaison psychiatry and the continuing meaning of deinstitutionalisation, with particular attention to power, trust, quality of life and the challenges of sustaining integrated and community-based care.
Interviewers: Sofía Bowen & Cristian Montenegro
Season 2
Coming later in 2026
A new season of Voces y trayectorias is currently in preparation. New conversations will continue to expand the project’s open-access audiovisual archive of experiences, debates and trajectories of psychiatric reform and deinstitutionalisation.
About the series
Hosted under the Transitions Project (Wellcome Trust, King’s College London), and organised in collaboration with the Instituto de Medicina Social, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, and the Escuela de Salud Pública, Universidad de Chile, Voces y trayectorias offers a forum to listen to, document, and connect diverse perspectives on reform—linking lived experience, activism, policy, and research.
Each session brings together voices from different generations and roles—former policymakers, practitioners, researchers, activists, and people with lived experience—to discuss the motivations, struggles, and transformations that have shaped the field of mental health care. Conversations explore both the personal and collective dimensions of change: how people imagine, build, and sustain alternatives to institutional psychiatry.
The series contributes to the renewed global debate on psychiatric deinstitutionalisation by advancing three key perspectives central to the Transitions project:
• A historical lens, connecting past experiences and present challenges in mental health reform.
• Perspectives from the Global South, highlighting locally grounded approaches and their wider resonances.
• Insights from the social sciences, expanding how mental health systems, care, and change are understood.
In addition, Voces y trayectorias aims to create an open-access audiovisual archive—a multilingual record of conversations capturing the diversity of experiences, contexts, and forms of knowledge that have shaped psychiatric reform. This archive will be made available through the Transitions website as a resource for researchers, students, policymakers, and communities engaged in rethinking mental health care.