Event Connectivity: Remapping the Social Role of Mental Health Service Users through a Chain of Meetings

This paper draws on a conception of “meetings as brackets in time and space”, that is, distinct social events capable of reflection on their environment (reference to the authors’ work). It provides an empirically grounded argument on a processual collective reflection, unfolding through interrelated meeting events, about the evolving social role of mental health service users (MSU). Specifically, it claims that meetings derive their agency as they connect different types of meetings which differ according to their level of separateness from and connectedness to their environment. Thus, a heterogeneous chain of meetings would guide the collective reflection examined throughout this paper. This paper analyses this chain of meetings by relying on ethnographic and focus group material collected for a research designed to evaluate the organisation of mental health services in the Brussels area from September 2017 to September 2018. This project, called Parcours.Brussels, gave priority to the perspectives of former or current MSUs. These people (n=27) were recruited through “alternative spaces” which are not formerly associated with traditional mental health services. They are inclusive spaces which voluntarily dissolve or at least de-emphasize both social and diagnostic categories in every day interactions. They are mostly centrally situated and accessible to anyone passing by, regardless of their mental health history. The research participants were deliberately encountered in different contexts including (1) planned but informal meetings taking place within alternative spaces (natural context); and (2) planned and formal meetings held for the research purpose in neutral settings (experimental meetings). The research process thus embodied an original history of meetings bringing together, on a regular basis, people from very different worlds in different contexts. This paper analyses this chain of meetings by relying on the metaphor of “meeting in brackets”, which borr