Entre continuidades e descontinuidades: representações sociais da doença mental e a prática profissional na saúde mental

Abstract

This paper aims to study the social representations of mental illness among professionals in the public health network inserted in the mental health, with a view to understanding how professional practices in the area are located after the implementation of the Mental Illness in the city of Campina Grande-PB. We adpoted as a methodological proposal the technique of Speech Analysis of the Collective Subjects and the criteria for the Theory of Social Representations. We have selected for the research the following categories of professionals: social workers, psychologists and nurses. We have covered for this study, adults CAPS Center for Psychosocial Care, the Unity of Psychiatric Reference (emergency) and a psychiatric hospital in operation in the city. Thus, it was possible to see some issues ace difficulties inherent in professional practice before the challenge of social reintegration. We have used the theoretical perspectives of Michel Foucault, Robert Castel, Erving Goffman, Franco Basaglia, among other authors of sociology and mental health. The theoretical foundation we have employed the Theory of Social Representations, which allowed us to understand that there is always a speech directed to any action, since it can become effective it is necessary to he collectively understood and binding by members of a particular community, group, institution etc. So that the exchanges are effective communication, which in turn, are essential to the structure of operation. In the analysis of narratives obtained in the field, we realize that, so little time to implement the Mental Illness in our reality, there is the influence of the traditional way of conceiving the madness in which we have been historically involved and the hegemony of the biomedical paradigm, and the figure of the doctor and psychiatrist guiding such knowledge. In this way, it is important to emphasize that the theoretical knowledge on the biopsychosocial complexity of the human being and on psychoanalysis have been included it the social representations considered here, in warning about the subtle way that significantly and to consider to be a subject. For people with mental suffering, the word, although weakened and fragmented, needs to be valued, especially as a therapeutic tool. Thus, we believe we are in a process in which conceptions older will lose their value to other more current begin to be introduced, and so on, until, gradually, come up closer to that primary goal concerning citizenship.