Sentidos sobre cuidado na atenção à saúde mental no contexto da enfermagem.

Abstract

Although Nursing adopts the notion of care in accordance with contemporary debates on mental health and although care is naturally associated to the feminine, instrumental practices which impact how Nursing performs this care are still prevailing. In this context, this dissertation intends to explore the senses which are attributed to care and the nexus with a gender perspective in the Nursing context from public domain documents. The dissertation is a qualitative research in Social Psychology anchored on socio-constructivist perspective with focus on real events socio-historically built as well as on language effects on social practices. Discursive practices and creation of meaning in daily life have been used as analysis methodology. The analyzed documents convey different meanings regarding care and indicate it is polissemic. Among the different conceptions, two positions from different origins of thoughts have excelled: a more holistic perspective, which accesses a comprehension of relational, integral, and human care, in which repertoires, meanings and notions associated to the language of Human Rights paradigm coexist. The other matrix, a more biological perspective, accesses a technicistic, hospitalocentric, and pathological care, which is influenced by biological sciences paradigm, demonstrating that this discursive field is marked by controversies. In relation to the intersection between care, Nursing, and gender, in one hand, Nursing has gained visibility as the profession of care in the health field; on the other hand, this care is often underestimated when it is historically associated to the feminine. Those discussions are also pertinent in an attempt to break off stigmas, bias, and prejudices which involve the insertion of the man in the Nursing profession. The care, intertwined to the historically built social relations established between men and women, positions the woman, the nurse, in a place of inferiority and subordination in relation to the man, the doctor.