Serviço social, (des)patologização da vida e religiosidade em saúde mental

Abstract

This dissertation is guided by the purpose of analyzing the thoughts of social workers about the role of religiosity for people being treated in the Psychosocial Care Centers (Centros de Atenção Psicossocial [CAPS]) in the context of the (de)pathologizing of life and the Social Service Ethical-Political Project (EPP), with the following specified objectives: to characterize the profile of mental health social workers in municipalities in Recôncavo da Bahia; to analyze the conception of Social Service professionals about madness, treatment and religiosity of people being treated at CAPS and the relationship between their considerations and the professional EPP. This research had as object of study the thoughts of social workers on the relevance of religiosity of people being treated by means of the Mental Health policy. The object of study was seen from the perspective of historical-dialectical materialism. The research had an empirical nature and a qualitative approach, by way of oral reports. Secondary and primary data were used. The primary data were based on the semi-structured interview; as for secondary data, systematic literature reviews were used. Interviews were conducted with five social workers from the Psychosocial Care Centers I in municipalities in the Recôncavo Baiano. In the interpretation of the interview data, content analysis by thematic categorization was used. The project was evaluated by the Research Ethics Committee of the Federal University of Sergipe (UFS), and it was approved, in accordance with Opinion No. 3.209.960; CAAE: 07947819.3.0000.5546. The results obtained reveal that Social Service professionals express, on the one hand, the extrinsic determinants of madness and the complementary relationship of the dimension of citizenship in the context of treatment, and on the other hand, they view madness in a diagnostic perspective and relegate its treatment to the overdimensioning of the psi field. The considerations of social workers were framed in a psychosocial perspective, located in the limbo between the de-pathologizing and the pathologizing of life. The social workers interviewed demonstrated that they have a paradoxical conception about religiosity in Mental Health, with highlights to the positive and negative impacts for people undergoing treatment in the CAPS – emphasizing its negative dimension as opposed to the positive emphasis given by the specialized literature. It is noteworthy that there was disagreement, in the interviewees’ report, on the possibilities of dialogue between Religiosity, Health and the professional EPP, which can express an unresolved relationship in the Brazilian Social Service with the dimension of religiosity, expression of a “repression” or a thematic indisposition due to a fear of conservative revival in the profession. It was concluded that the relationship between religiosity-mental health and the professional EPP is only viable if glimpsed in the outlines of the anti-asylum perspective of de-pathologizing of life, which conceives madness and its stigma as expressions of the Social Question and objects of intervention of the social worker, as long as in the direction of psychiatric deinstitutionalization, that is, the deconstruction of asylum logic in the sociocultural sphere. This relationship must not do without the understanding of religiosity as a mechanism for social support and for coping with existential and social situations, which, within the scope of the socio-cultural imaginary, assumes important functions in the context of anti-asylum struggle.