A STUDY ON MEDICALIZATION AND DEMEDICALIZATION PROCESSES IN THE FIELD OF MENTAL HEALTH

Abstract

Social medicalization is a process in which the phenomena, authority or rationality produced by medicine begin to act and regulate aspects of individual and collective human life, favoring the construction of asymmetrical relationships in the field of health/mental health. This review article seeks to carry out a theoretical reflection on the process of social medicalization, presenting some proposals for demedicalization in mental health recently introduced in Brazil, from the perspective of recovery. To this end, contributions such as the Hearing Voices Groups and Open Dialogue are presented as demedicalizing strategies that are part of the care proposal centered on the protagonism and interaction between the subjects as agents of transformation of their own processes and contexts. The article aims to reflect on mental health practices guided by the knowledge of experience and first-person narrative.  It can be concluded that group interventions aimed at demedicalization are presented as alternatives capable of proposing other ways of care, seeking to rescue mutual understanding, horizontality, co-responsibility, encouraging self-care, autonomy and empowerment of the subject as the protagonist of their health.