TEACHER-STUDENT RELATIONSHIP AND THE DRAMA OF TEACHERS’ PSYCHIATRIZATION: A STUDY BASED ON GOIÂNIA MUNICIPALITY DATA

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This paper reports an investigation on the drama of teachers’ psychiatrization in the teacher-student relationship in the municipal educational system of Goiânia, Brazil, which is linked to the Project “Medicalization in Goiás: critical investigations in the history and contemporaneity of biopsychosocial practices and discourses”. The sick leave of elementary education teachers for medical reasons under code F index of the ICD-10 shows a framework of precariousness and alienation of work in capitalism, with impacts on the social relationship between teachers and students. We discuss the characteristics pointed out in this interaction that reveals the dialectical complexity of the drama of psychiatric illness and the material conditions of work experience. This result was based on a qualitative data analysis entered in summary cards, based on medical sick leave records made available by the Municipal Medical Board. Our reference was the Cultural-Historical Psychology as interpreted by Yves Clot's Clinic of Activity. We considered 35 cards - out of 109 summary cards reviewed that refer to the teacher-student relationship during the process of teacher’s psychiatrization. Subsequently, we set categories, labeled complaints and developments, which reveal common processes in the suffering of those teachers. We observed that the presence of occupational psychopathologies is associated with the workers’ activity precariousness and expropriation of reality. We consider that this disease is a socially constituted process at the heart of a dialectical social-historical framework, and we conclude our investigation with emphasis on collective intervention as a resource to face psychiatrization, as well as offering support for public policies that aim to face precariousness.