Identidade, drogas e saúde mental: narrativas de pessoas em situação de rua

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to discuss how people who live on streets and are drug users, deal with the social exclusion they are subjected to, observing how the characters they represent influence their identities. Therefore, following the criterion of saturation, the narratives of two persons who lived on streets in the center of Fortaleza (CE) and who are drug users were utilized. Propositions presented by Antonio da Costa Ciampa and Aluísio Ferreira de Lima, particularly those for narratives analysis, particularly those related to the conception of identity as metamorphosis, and character, sameness, personhood and recognition categories. Thus, in the study we can perceive the impact of the forms of recognition experienced by the subjects interviewed in the constitution of their identities, as well as the repercussions of the stigmas faced by them in the everyday representation of the characters “person living on streets” and “drug user”. Finally, the ruptures of the characters in the processes of sameness and the difficulty on dealing with new characters in the movements of personhood are discussed. Reflections about how the assumed identity attributed to these two characters creates limitations on the interactions of these people in their relations with employees of mental health services, who end up reproducing the forms of exclusion experienced by them, are also analyzed.