O Centro de Atenção Psicossocial como caminho e o sujeito como guia: narrativas de usuários

Abstract

From the historical point of view, the Psychiatric Reform movement in Brazil is recent, which corroborates that professionals face daily challenges in their practices. This movement has the Psychosocial Care Centers (CAPS) as prominent services to promote and effect changes in user care supported by the anti-asylum perspective. This research has as its main objective to understand if and how the services developed in the CAPS have contributed to the mental health of the users they assist. As specific objectives, we sought to: identify the therapeutic paths developed in CAPS with regard to care, treatment, and social rehabilitation directed to users; identify if and how users of CAPS are listened to and their demands validated in the daily experience of their treatment in the service and explore the relationship between psychological suffering and social markers. This study was carried out with a qualitative approach and developed in a CAPS in a countryside city in the state of Minas Gerais. Using the 'snowball' methodology, 10 users were selected and, by means of individual interviews with a semi-structured script, contributed to the development of the dissertation. In addition to the interviews, the study is composed of the participant observation method and the researcher's field diary. As a result, it was possible to identify that CAPS, through its proposals of care, rehabilitation, and treatment, is able to offer a humanized care that meets the public mental health policies. Social participation was also a factor investigated in the interviews to understand if and which social places those subjects occupy in the health service. The users also denounce cultural factors, social and economic vulnerability directly linked to the processes of psychological illness of the subjects in contemporary society. We conclude that, despite the advances in the transformations and ruptures that emerge in daily life, the CAPS still reproduces interventions that enclose the subject. This happens by limiting the participation of the user to the interior of the service, imposition of behaviors that limit the allowed behaviors, professional listening offered to users, but supported by the biomedical model. Advances in breaking with the hospital-centric logic have occurred, but to advance further, it is necessary to listen to users and reconstruct new behaviors.