A redução de danos em um CAPSad: o ponto de vista dos usuários

Abstract

The harm reduction (HR) proposal has been used in the development of health public policies that are not focused only in the abstinence of psychoactive substances. On one hand we have the moral prejudice and the professionals’ resistance to working with the proposal as one of the barriers in its implementations; on the other we have the problem of the unfamiliarity of the psychoactive substance users with the HR. The research was made in a Psychosocial Attention Center – alcohol and other drugs (CAPSad) in the city of Uberlândia; Minas Gerais; Brazil, and it aimed to investigate the Harm Reduction policy and practices with the service users and for this were conducted ten semi-structured interviews with them and the collected data was analyzed using the content analysis methodology. The content analysis is constituted as a set of techniques of communication analysis that uses systematic and objective procedures of description of the messages content. One of the most relevant data, besides the ignorance about the HR, is that, when the drug users understood what the HR is, they were shown receptive to it for the coping of risks and difficulties that the abuse and dependence of psychoactive substances caused; recognized its therapeutic effects, especially with regard to accession to the treatment and relapse management.