Rhizome is an interdisciplinary journal dedicated to issues at the intersection of the fields of mental health and precariousness. Since it was established in 2000, it has been under the auspices of and edited by Orspere-Samdarra, the French national body monitoring mental health, vulnerability, and society. Its varied subject matter is determined based on practical, political, and/or clinical issues. Rhizome aims to support practices and political decision-making and to contribute to scientific debate.
Its contributors and readers, like a rhizome, are part of the expansion of the network of individuals who engage with psychosocial issues, whether this is from the perspective of suffering, of the clinician, or of intervention. In more general terms, one of the roles of the journal is to examine the individualization of contemporary society together with its characteristics and consequences and the responses to this from institutions, organizations, collectives, users, and participants.
Rhizome is a space for dialogue between the sciences, especially between the human, social and medical sciences, between practices, and between those individuals who are affected by difficulties and/or precariousness, and those who work with them. This network aims to be non-hierarchical, with reference to the theory of the rhizome developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari.
There is a focus on the diversity of contributions at both a national and international level. Rhizome is, in fact, funded by the French government’s Direction Générale de la Santé (Directorate General of Health) and its Direction Générale de la Cohésion Sociale (Directorate General of Social Cohesion), and is distributed for free to a broad readership consisting of social service stakeholders, healthcare providers, students, and individuals from a wide range of backgrounds. The journal is freely available online on the Cairn platform and on the Orspere-Samdarra website. It is published in two formats, Bulletins de Rhizome (three issues per year) and Cahiers de Rhizome (one issue per year). Each issue of the Cahiers is over 100 pages long and focuses on a specific theme related to research carried out by Orspere-Samdarra. A call for contributions is launched at the beginning of each year, and articles—which can be longer than those published in the Bulletins—are selected based on quality but also in terms of their correlation with the issue’s theme and the questions it deals with.
