In Brazil, mental health has long been understood as more than an individual matter. Since the late 1970s, the country's psychiatric reform challenged the idea that the psychological and emotional impacts on mental health could be separated from the social and political conditions in which people live, and that care could be reduced to individual treatment. This placed questions of freedom, citizenship and participation at the centre of mental health care.
Every year on May 18, Brazil marks the Day of the Anti-Asylum Struggle (O Dia da Luta Antimanicomial), when thousands of people take to the streets.