Risk as persistent danger and mental health care: normalizing sanctions on the movement in territory

Abstract

This research aims to analyze the relationship between users and professionals in a Centro de Atenção Psicossocial - Psychosocial Care Center (Caps), focusing on listening, observation and the perception of how care is experienced by them. For this purpose, a qualitative study was conducted by participant observation and semi-structured interviews with professionals of a Caps in the city of Pesqueira (PE, Brazil). The interviews were analyzed according to discursive textual analysis, which was carried out through the ATLAS.ti software. Onwards, in the field of care practices, we noticed that the persistence of the danger notion assigned to the psychic suffering person points to a complex process of maintenance of stigmatizing mental illness conceptions. In the analysis of care relationships, we have seen the centrality of drug treatment, as well as the existence of circuits that are allowed or not by the community, that regulates circulation in territory. The results point to the linkage of care practices to the medicalization of psychological distress and excessive consumption of medicines.