Análisis Crítico de las Dinámicas del Sistema Educativo Colombiano Frente a la Salud Mental

Abstract

This research critically examines the discourses and practices surrounding mental health within the Colombian educational system, through the lens of Human Rights Education and Critical Pedagogy. It begins with a central problematization: mental health has largely been approached through a pathologizing and medicalizing logic that disregards structural conditions of inequality, depoliticizes distress, and places individual responsibility on the subject. Within this framework, schools tend to reproduce normative discourses that reinforce labels and control- oriented practices, while failing to recognize students' sociocultural diversity and lived realities. Using a qualitative-interpretative approach, this thesis conducts a documentary review of policies, academic articles, and institutional documents. These are analyzed through qualitative content analysis tools to identify how hegemonic discourses operate and what pedagogical effects they produce. Three key categories are explored: mental health and the educational system; medicalization and control; and the teacher-student relationship. Findings reveal that educational policies prioritize individualistic models centered on clinical diagnosis, sidelining community-based and pedagogical approaches. Mental health is often instrumentalized as a mechanism of regulation linked to academic performance and productivity, aligned with a neoliberal logic that subordinates well-being to human capital. From a critical pedagogical standpoint, the study calls for a redefinition of mental health as a collective right, grounded in context, social justice, and educational transformation.