Caring for the Movement? Mental Health and Feminist Organizing in Social Movements

Leslie Carmel Gauditz (Helmut-Schmidt-University in Hamburg, Germany), Sophia Wathne (Independent scholar / Centre on Social Movement Studies, Florence (COSMOS), and Anna Carastathis (Feminist Autonomous Centre for research/ University College Dublin)

Mental health in social movements

Being in movement can be rewarding, empowering and exhilarating in itself and engaging in contentious politics can give us a great sense of agency and purpose. Protest is an important driver of change in both democratic and authoritarian regimes; by effecting and prefiguring the kind of change in society they dream about, as well as creating better conditions for their own and others’ lives, people in movements can experience connection and transformation (Kaba, 2021; Doetsch-Kidder, 2012; Cox and Fominaya, 2009; della Porta and Diani, 2006). However, fighting to create change is an uphill battle that can be both demanding and dangerous depending on the context. From conflicts with political opponents, to violence from a repressive state or multinational companies (Amnesty International, 2026; Global Witness, 2025), to internal movement struggles, activism can be draining, scary and even traumatizing on different levels and in different ways — as debates within movements have long shown (Jones, 2007; Foley, 1999). Care structures meeting survival needs and connecting us in communities; preventing, addressing, and redressing violence and internalized oppression; organized conflict resolution, accountability and transformative justice processes, which are sensitive to individuals’ identities and vulnerabilities might improve activists’ well-being and increase movement sustainability but are lacking in many movements or exist in name only (Gauditz, 2024; Gorski and Erakat, 2019; Withers, 2014). 

This is why social movement studies as well as peace and conflict studies have slowly started to focus more on questions of mental health and burnout around activism, discussing positive and negative implications for individuals and groups (Nunarnan, 2026; Gravante and Poma, 2026; Gleeson, 2023; Giæver and Russell, 2025; Nah, 2021). Particularly those who face multiple oppressions experience ‘intersectional disempowerment’ in movements that fail to coalesce around shared agendas (Crenshaw, 1991). Despite the awakening interest it is still a fragmented discussion, lacking major theoretical frameworks. Moreover, as movements themselves are also having these discussions, which hopefully will have an impact (Bevington and Dixon, 2005), in strengthening and supporting the activists and movements enacting direct democracy, protecting/protesting representative democracies, defending human rights, and seeking climate justice and defending land, water, and ecologies. With this Special Issue we want to enhance discussions on mental health and flourishing through an intersectional feminist lens.

Activist organizing around mental health through an intersectional feminist lens

The way we perceive and enact politics of any kind has always been gendered and racialized, intersectional in terms of who can participate in setting political agendas (Crenshaw, 1989) and on what strategies and decision-making processes collective organizing focusses. Concepts from feminist organizing and critical pedagogy such as safe(r) or brave(r) spaces (Campbell and Eizadirad, 2022; Holley and Steiner, 2005; Boostrom, 1998), have circulated widely in a variety of social justice struggles as well as ideas of centring and fairly dividing up care work across a range of terrains of struggle. Militant action during risky rallies, for example, and facing police repression may entail different dynamics than social direct action through public kitchens (dynamics that relate to gender, racialization, disability and immigration status etc). Yet, across these forms of action, the question arises: “Who is cleaning our feminist dishes?” (Abwooli, 2025). Highlighting the mental health needs of activists will inevitably also highlight the emotional, physical, and material care work taking place internally in movements — or the consequences of the lack of such work. 

We are interested in how activists organize around mental health concerns as part of social movement organizing, from their protest strategies to their meeting structures. How movements handle burnout, conflict resolution, violence, or harm within movements and their impact on mental health, understood in relational and not merely in individualist terms. How we can view mental health and emotional care work through an intersectional lens that reveals its construction by multiple relations of power. How ‘mental health’ itself is problematized and often resisted as pathologizing (by disability justice movements, trans movements, and anti-colonial movements, to name a few), and how it may be weaponized within or against movements to the detriment of social justice and mutual flourishing.

Possible Contributions

We invite contributions around current and past protest waves, grassroots organizing, occupations, mutual aid, community organizing, labour organizing, land defense, and social movements of all kinds, including decolonial, feminist, queer, trans, antiracist, anti-colonial, environmental justice, crip*/disability, and abolitionist movements. We welcome both examples and analysis of perceived failure and success, as well as situations in which the outcomes resist such categorization.

The Special Issue invites both conceptual and empirical articles, as well as artistic and/or personal reflections (can be anonymized). They can revolve around, but are not limited to, questions such as:

• How is mental health and/or activist burnout perceived and discussed in social movements and protest structures
• Do certain forms of organizing impact activists’ mental health and/or (re)produce vulnerabilities?
• How do movements think strategically about media engagement and consumption in times of state repression, conflict and genocide?
• What are ways in which movements fail to take mental health and care work into account while organizing and strategizing, and what are the consequences?
• How are vulnerabilities and care duties distributed within movements, according to people’s (perceived) identities
• Who can ask for support within movements, according to people’s vulnerabilities and (perceived) identities, and who receives it?
• What examples of feminist, abolitionist, and/or decolonial practices exist, in which care work is integral to the organizing?
• How are safe(r) / brave(r) spaces and restorative/transformative justice processes organized and what are the outcomes?

As guest editors, we imagine such a Special Issue as an exciting opportunity of learning and sharing knowledge, amongst and between activists and scholars, as we hope to contribute to pluralistic democratic processes in social movements in a time of rising authoritarian, fascist politics and genocide. We cannot normalize what is happening around us, from the genocide in Gaza, the ongoing climate disaster, transnational anti-gender politics, ICE raids in the US, CEAS reform in EUrope, to the war crimes and atrocities in DR Congo, Sudan, Ukraine and beyond – just to name a few. It is a marathon, not a sprint, and people need to take care of each other along the way. 

*Once a slur against disabled people, 'crip' is being reclaimed and resignified as an identity of resistance against ableism (See Kaufer, 2013).

Submission Details

Please submit abstracts by the 15 October 2026 to burnoutmovement(at)hsu-hh.de

If selected for the Special Issue, we will ask you to submit full papers via https://www.editorialmanager.com/femo/default.aspx by the 28 of February 2027. More information on the submission process can be found here: https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/journals/feminism-and-organization/author-instructions#submissions.

Questions regarding submission please contact: feminism-Organization(at)bristol.ac.uk. If you wish to discuss contributions, please contact Anna, Sophia and Leslie at burnoutmovement(at)hsu-hh.de 

Call for Papers (Link)