Workshop with the rwm working group and Marta Echaves | Activity

This Encounter Aims to Generate Links Between the Collective and Hands-on Learning Approach of the MACBA Working Group Web Radio and the ongoing research of Marta Echaves, Philosopher, Researcher and Cultural Programmer, Focusing on the Contemporary Mental Health Crisis, The Growing Use of Psychotropic Medication and the Pharmaceutical Industry’s Renewed Interest in the USE of Psychedeelic Drugs as Antidepressants.

We are Living Through an Unprcedented Mental Health Crisis. In a climate of existing UNCERTINTY, Managed Morbidity and the Threat of Planetary Extincing, The Number of People Diagnosed with depression and Prescribed Medication is Steadily Increasing. During the Past Decade, the So-Called “Psychedelic Renaissance” Has Mobilised the Pharmaceutical Industry, World-Renowned Universities and the Biomedical Start-up Scene to Search for New Antidepressant Treatments. Drugs that Until Recently Were Seen As a Public Health Hazard and Criminalized – Such As LSD, Psilocybin, MDMA and Ketine – Are Now Being Investigated for the Potential and Innovative Therapeutic Effects. But what is behind the renewed interest in these substances? And are we really witnessing a neuropsychiatric and pharmacological paradigm shift?

Marta Echaves‘Ongoing research focus on the only one of that “psychedelics” that has been approved for use as an antidepressant: ketine. Used as an Anaesthetic in Hospitals Since the 1970s, It Has Become Increasingly Popular As in Recreational Drug. The History of Ketine Also Leads Us to Question How the Politics of Drugs and Pharmaceuticals have Shaped the Mechanisms of Social Control in the 20th and 21st Centuries. From this perspective, We aim to analylyse the Structural Causes of Contemporary Malaise and Our Relationship with the Consumption of Substances That, Acting As Prostheses, Help Us To Deal With Our Present-Day Exhaustion, Anxiety and Lack of Horizons.