Towards a Decolonial Discussion on Mental Distress: Early Soviet Ideas of Consciousness through Vygotsky, Vološinov and Bakhtin Perspectives

ABSTRACT Capitalism plays an important role in framing mental distress, which is widely discussed in the field of mental health, since it is based on the discourse and actions guided by biomedical ideology, the medicalisation and an individualistic perspective, in addition to being reduced to biological aspects. Therefore, from the conceptions of consciousness proposed by Vygotsky, Vološinov and Bakhtin, we will be able better to understand some aspects related to mental distress in a dialogical perspective, as well as weave possible decolonial reflections. The article enables a synthesis of the initial ideas of Vygostky and Vološinov about the formation of human consciousness, as well as the way in which these ideas were approached by Bakhtin in the analysis of the novels, through the works Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics and Rabelais and His World and how such ideas allow a discussion about mental distress in a decolonial bias.