Home sweet harm: Confinement and tranquilidad in post-asylum Peru.

Abstract

This article examines how Peru's Community Mental Health (CMH) model contributes to the exclusion and home confinement of mentally ill individuals. Based on the experience of a woman diagnosed with schizophrenia and her mother, I show how CMH's emphasis on community-based care often fails in practice, as neighbors respond to people with mental illness through stigma and violence. Drawing on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Lima, Peru, I argue that home confinement is produced both by the CMH model and by residents' notions of the "proper" place for the mentally ill. By analyzing public perceptions of home confinement and the unfulfilled promises of CMH, I demonstrate how home confinement becomes both a protective strategy and a form of constraint. Challenging the assumption that there is a community to return to, I propose tranquilidad (being calm/unbothered) as an unintended outcome achieved through reduced exposure and withdrawal from community life.