Fortalecimento das pessoas com transtornos mentais: a experiência dos usuários do Movimento de Saúde Mental Comunitária do Bom Jardim

Abstract

This study falls within the field of qualitative assessment of mental health services, aiming to understand how care practices impact on the empowerment of people with mental disorders accompanied by the Movement for Mental Health Community in Bom Jardim. This institution is an NGO established in 1996 by the Comboni Missionaries and leaders of the Basic Ecclesial Communities, in Fortaleza-Ce. During this experiment in mental health, which comes from the popular movement, I met people who took part in the movement with a diagnosis of mental disorder, who are now caretakers. To understand this change in the social status of madness, I used the contributions from the community psychology, Gois and Montero, and the assumptions of the Brazilian Psychiatric Reform, Amarante and Rotelli. The methodology used was the perspective of hermeneutics in a critical case study of the Community Mental Health Movement in Bom Jardim. The field study took place from August 2009 to March 2010 and the application of the instruments occurred during June and July 2010. The participants were eight people who took part in the movement with a diagnosis of mental disorder, and now work as caretakers, as well as the president of the Community Mental Health Movement in Bom Jardim. The instruments used were focus groups, depth interviews and interviews mediated by the autodescriptions. After the production and transcription of data, an interpretive network was constructed. It concerned two issues: empowerment of people with mental illness and caretaking. The results indicate that the participation of people with mental disorders in a variety of caretaking activities favor the strengthening of the movement, leading to a change in beliefs about oneself and the world, experiencing the courage to do things differently, overcoming fatalistic attitudes that promote passivity, accommodation and disqualification. There is the rescue of personal worth and personal power, developing a sense of community ownership and ability to reflect and act upon reality. The Movement presents innovative features in mental health care when it starts a new social space for madness, through volunteering. The development of this activity decreases isolation, loneliness, alienation and anomie, promoting new areas of trade in the community. Another innovative feature in mental health care is recognized in the spiritual dimension of the movement as a link with the transcendent, in a freer experience of institutionalization, linked to the process of personal development, mediated by the deep involvement with the Other and to community development.