Educação popular em saúde mental: uma revisão narrativa de literatura

Abstract

Popular Health Education is a device that moves and enhances individual and collective autonomies; articulates individuals and movements in the fight for health rights; and strengthens society's control over public policies through the construction of participatory, critical and integrative ways of thinking and doing health. From this, it is thought that in the field of Mental Health, constructions in Popular Education can facilitate the movement of the Brazilian Psychiatric Reform and strengthen the process of deinstitutionalization of madness linked to the Anti-Asylum Fight. In order to better understand how this articulation between Popular Education and Mental Health could take place, a narrative literature review was carried out, based mainly on the search for scientific publications on the subject. In total, 8 publications were found that supported the discussion on Popular Education in Mental Health. The Psychiatric Reform, the strategy of the deinstitutionalization of madness and the Anti-Asylum Fight are articulated as they question the centrality of psychiatric knowledge and the stigmatizing and excluding medical-psychological model, with the transformation of the social place given to the insane and with the stigma of madness. Popular Education, in turn, corresponds to an educational practice aimed at the production of autonomy and freedom, driving and encouraging exchanges and interactions between the various subjects involved in some social problem, leading to the joint construction of knowledge and political organization. Thus, faced with the dismantling of Mental Health policies and the threats to the achievements of the Brazilian Psychiatric Reform, it is valid to think of Popular Education as a powerful reference to be used in the field of Mental Health in order to promote a fair and revolutionary Psychiatric Reform from of the production of autonomy, citizenship, subjectivation, union and fight of subjects considered crazy. Finally, it is considered that despite the remarkable power of Popular Education in Mental Health, there is still little research on this topic. It is suggested that more researches and experiments be carried out in this area in order to know more about the subject. Popular Education Interventions in Mental Health can be designed and directed beyond the users and/or professionals of Psychosocial Care Network, since for a truly deinstitutionalized society, the Anti-Asylum Fight must belong to all of us.