ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the resistance tactics and strategies used by patients to confront the medical status quo through expanded responses to statistical-epidemiological questions, a highly routine activity which enables institutional inclusion and exclusion criteria to be set. I understand expanded answers as meaningful actions which not only serve individual, local tactics (such as raising personal concerns) but also index higher contextual levels. In this sense, resisting the constraints of a question may also imply resisting State-defined policies of classification and exclusion. I observed four types of expanded answers which display competence in bureaucratic discourse; move from the sphere of the public to the private; deal with potential face-threats; and pre-empt rejection. Although some of these strategies can be interpreted as a way of optimizing exclusion, most of them can be seen as actions of resistance to classification, thus allowing clients to negotiate access to mental healthcare.
