Cuidando dos cuidadores: a saúde mental dos profissionais que atuam em serviços de referência à vítimas de violência sexual e abortamento legal

Abstract

Sexual violence is one of the main forms of human rights violations and a global public health problem. In Brazil, the fight against sexual violence led to the creation of referral services for victims, as well as assistance in cases of abortion permitted by law, which allow immediate access to multidisciplinary care. However, many services operate in precarious conditions, with limited resources and high emotional costs for the professionals involved. Thus, the objective was to understand what form of care for victims of sexual violence affects the mental health of professionals who work in this segment. This is a qualitative study, using interviews to collect data. From the analysis of the participants' speech corpus using content analysis, two main categories were identified: “institutional obstacles” and “personal affects”, with these categories breaking down new areas of meaning. When analyzing all categories together, issues relating to the psychological, work, family and political spheres should be observed. In this way, the study demonstrates that professional work in caring for victims of sexual violence and legal abortion impacts the daily work of professionals, since the lack of institutional and psychological support brings with it anguish, mental exhaustion and professional illness. The results converge with the literature and the study contributes by bringing more debates to this topic, which still has little national research