Eu, tu, elas: os atravessamentos dos discursos de gênero na medicalização do sofrimento psíquico de mulheres.

Abstract

Studies about the medicalization of psychological distress under the gender perspective become urgent when we have some dominant discourses on gender that often place women in a position of greater subordination. Moreover, such discourses crystallize women's modes of subjectivation, causing part of their stories to be permeated by a kind of violence subtly disseminated through various social devices and technologies, sometimes legitimized by medical discourse. We propose in this work to problematize the intersections of gender discourses in the medicalization of the psychological distress of women who use benzodiazepines (BZD). The research had a qualitative design, and narrative interviews were conducted with nine women between September and October 2018. The triggering question of the interview was: "What led you to use BZD?". The reading of the narratives was based on the analysis of foucaultian-inspired statements. It was perceived in the narratives produced by the participants that the practice of some health professionals is still very permeated by a biologizing, individualistic and universalizing look. Historical complexity is often overlooked in favor of objective and supposedly neutral diagnoses and drug prescriptions; The professionals end up assuming a disciplining and docilizing discourse on the modes of subjectivation of women. It was also possible to perceive the tensions present in women, between movements of resistance and subjection to medicalization, as well as forces of reiteration and rupture by some health professionals; a power play that has revealed to us how much we are all constrained by a range of regulatory but also potentially subversive rules. It is in this position of subversion that we find room to propose a broader and more complex way of understanding the psychological distress that encompasses the knowledge / power network that shapes the subjects and, thus, weaving a clinic that welcomes such women and their psychological distresses with ethical, aesthetic and political commitment.