Representações sociais da doença mental e da reforma psiquiátrica no contexto do Hospital Geral.

Abstract

By considering the ramifications of the political movement in Psychiatric Reform concerning care, it is important to develop research about Health professionals’ social representations of madness, mental illness and Psychiatric Reform in the realm of a general hospital. It is believed that the relevance of this project consists in the advance of scientific knowledge in Healthcare, focusing on psychosocial aspects connected to the health-illness process, in parallel to the social production of health. Therefore, this study is about exploratory and descriptive field research, anchored by the theoretical perspective of social representations. Also, the general objective of this study is to identify the Health professionals’ social representations of madness, mental illness and Psychiatric Reform, in the context of a General Hospital. Consequently, in an intentional and not probabilistic way, thirty-six professionals – nurses, doctors and psychologists - participated in the research. In order to collect data, a biosocial demographic questionnaire, the semi-structured interview technique and the free word association technique were used. The data obtained through the questionnaire was described based on descriptive statistics which provides frequency, average and standard deviation. The semi-structured interview data was analysed using the Context Analysis Technique by Bardin, and the data collected

through the free word association technique was processed in the softwaretri-deux- mots and analysed using the Correspondence Factorial Analysis. Through the

obtained results it was possible to assess representations and knowledge of madness, mental illness and Psychiatric Reform, the established relations between General Hospitals and Psychiatric Reform and also to observe the discrepant welcoming and practice modalities performed by different types of professionals, which allowed a comparative analysis of data. At the end of this research, new information could be transmitted to the academic community in the Field of Mental Healthcare, contributing to the exposure of possible ways of intervention when it comes to welcoming and professional practice.