O avanço do conservadorismo na Política de Saúde Mental: as implicações para o Serviço Social

Abstract

This final paper has the main objective of analyzing the social worker’s performance at the Mental Health Policy, considering the progress of conservatism nowadays and seeking to understand the Mental Health Policy in Brazil since its emergence, going through the Psychiatric Reform Movement, up to the current days, highlighting how Social Work got involved in it throughout this period of time. The methodology applied in this paper consists an exploratory and qualitative approach. Therefore, this is a bibliographical and documental research based on books, dissertations, articles, laws, technical note and ordinances. Thus, it was developed based on Marx’s critical/dialectical method. At first we discuss the historical bases of Mental Health in Brazil since the coming of its first hospital, back in the 19th century, until the approval of the Law nº 10.2016/01. The research shows the process of the Psychiatric Reform and its relevance in the fight for the rights of people in psychic suffering. In addition, it also deliberates about the State’s role throughout this period, highlighting how its economic and political measures causes the retrogression of the Psychiatric Reform in Brazil and simultaneously indulges the advance of conservatism, especially in recent years. This paper highlights, throughout the chapters, the Social Work’s involvement at the Mental Health Policy that was based, at first, on the conservative methods of Social Case Work and Social Group/Community Work, however with the coming of the Social Work’s Ethical-Political Project there is an effort to discontinue these practices. The research also points out that there is a tendency towards a resurgence of a hospital-centered perspective in Brazil’s Mental Health Policy and this tendency may allow conservative practices, based on therapy and the adjustment of individuals, to reappear. Thereby, this paper intends to bring to light a current and necessary debate about the paths that the Mental Health Policy is tracing and, how Social Work needs to rise up against the Mental Health’s Policy disarticulation, that grows more evident every day.