Mental health care and the political participation of users and families in the resignification of stigma on mental disorders

Abstract

Abstract The persistence of stigma associated with mental disorders is a problem that health systems must face in the fight against discrimination of people who experience psychological distress. This qualitative narrative study aims to understand the experience of living with the stigma related to mental disorders from the reports of users and family members of people assisted in Psychosocial Care Centers in different regions of the city of Fortaleza-CE. Four users and three family members who kept the particularity of belonging to a nucleus of the anti-asylum struggle were interviewed. Through a script with questions about individual experiences in the search for care, the information produced was analyzed by the method of dialectical hermeneutics. The results show that stigma is still present in everyday life, implying suffering and discrimination of these people. However, the mental health care processes received, which were oriented towards the recognition of the potential and condition of political subjects, gave new meaning to negative perceptions about themselves and about the services in which they were treated. This process contributed with the engagement of users and family members in official instances of social control and in the anti-asylum movement, instigating, among the subjects, the defense of humanized care and the fight against stigma.