Atenção primária à saúde e a violência infantojuvenil: desafios e estratégias dos profissionais de saúde

Abstract

Violence against children and adolescents is a serious public health problem with a massive social impact. Primary Health Care (PHC) serves as a strategic setting for addressing these issues, and its presence in the community enables health professionals to build relationships with families and identify cases of violence early on. The objective of this research was to analyze the role of Primary Health Care professionals in assisting children and adolescents in situations of violence, through the systematization of scientific knowledge and the investigation of the challenges of care and their implications for the health and work of these professionals. This research constitutes a dissertation-equivalent study, structured into two academic outputs: a book chapter and an empirical scientific article. This paper presents Chapter 3 of the book, titled “Psychological Effects of Working with Victims of Child and Adolescent Violence,” which was an integrative literature review conducted by searching for studies published between 2020 and 2025 in the PubMed, BVS, CAPES, and SciELo databases. Five manuscripts were analyzed, which allowed for the construction of three categories: Psychological impacts and traumatic distress among professionals; Lack of training and institutional support; and Coping and self-protection strategies. The second output was a scientific article titled “Child and Adolescent Violence in Primary Health Care: Challenges and Implications for Workers’ Health,” a mixed-methods study conducted with 36 primary health care professionals using an online questionnaire. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, thematic content analysis, and lexical analysis with the IRaMuTeQ software. The results showed that caring for victims of child and adolescent violence exposes professionals to ethical dilemmas, external pressures, and insecurities, requiring institutional support. They also revealed vulnerabilities in the organization of care, with fragile workflows and protocols. The integration of these two approaches allowed for the synthesis of evidence from the scientific literature and empirical findings derived from the reality of service delivery, enabling a broader understanding of the challenges of caring for children and adolescents in situations of violence and their implications for the health and work of the professionals involved.