This article explores the field of children’s mental health from a human rights perspective. Focusing on the interface between legislation and public policy and institutional practices, we examine the discourses adopted by healthcare professionals in relation to children in the city of Buenos Aires. Using in-depth interviewing, we conceptualize how these discourses affect processes of subjective constitution and the construction of identities of children with severe psychological suffering. The findings reveal a significant gap between normative frameworks and the meanings constructed by social actors in the field of mental health. Professionals legitimize and reproduce knowledge that creates stigmatized, pathologized, and discredited identities.
Childhood; Mental health; Policies; Rights; Institutionalization