Educational-communicative action in the relationship of social workers with family and users: integrality in mental health care

Abstract

This work aims to provoke reflections on the potential of human relations in mental health care by articulating Paulo Freire’s educational action and Jürgen Habermas’s communicative action, proposing a theoretical construct called “educativecommunicative action” for the relationship of social workers with family members and users of Psychosocial Care Centers. The theoretical construct of educational-communicative action emerged from fundamental categories, such as: listening, dialogue, language, culture, horizontality and education. In addition to the categories that emerge from the relation between Habermas and Freire, care can also be added as a fundamental category for the educational-communicative action. From the anti-asylum precepts, the educational-communicative action has the potential to strengthen family and community bonds, as an operative technical intervention of social work. To do this, a potent permanent health education intervention is needed among the social workers in order to strengthen the anti-asylum principles in professional practice, to broaden the historical perspective on the Psychiatric Reform and to encourage a concept of education that is emancipatory and, consequently, antiasylum, based on the ethical-political project of the profession.