Banca de DEFESA: ANA CAROLINA CERQUEIRA MEDRADO

CARE, WOMEN, HEALTH: SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONIST PSYCHOLOGY AND INTERSECTIONAL FEMINISM

Mental Health; Health Care: Gender, Women; Social Psychology

This thesis analyzes the meanings constructed by health workers of the Brazilian National Health System about female mental illness and the care directed to such women in an intersection between race, social class, and gender. It adopts as a theoretical reference the constructionist social psychology, intersectional feminism, and the historical narratives about the female self, both from a patriarchal perspective and from a perspective of resistance to patriarchal power. In terms of methodology, it discusses the steps taken to construct the research information. The spaces chosen for data production were services of the Unified Health System in two Health Districts of Salvador (identified as Health District 1 and Health District 2). Five health workers were interviewed: one psychologist and one occupational therapist who make up the team of the Expanded Center for Family Health of Health District 1; one psychologist from a Psychosocial Care Center II of Health District 2; one psychologist and one psychology intern from another Expanded Center for Family Health of Health District 1. The analysis of the information occurred from a composition between the association maps of ideas and the thematic content analysis. Thus, the results were divided into three thematic categories/chapters entitled: "Consorting: on women's groups"; "Other care spaces and their relation with public policies and public domain documents"; and "'These women have no problem giving birth': on the various acts of violence in health services". The first category, "Consorting: about women's groups", refers to the groups developed by the professionals participating in the research aimed at women with psychological illness, an activity common to all the participants. Such sufferings were recognized as having the same root: the power relations that are configured in the intersection between race, class, and gender. As a result of the thesis, the essentialization of being a woman around maternity stands out, which can be perceived both by the interpretative repertoires of the professionals interviewed and the activities available in the service. Such essentialization occurs under the public policies that construct and are constructed based on social discourses that associate being a woman with maternity and care. Public policies have been organized based on maternalism and familism, and both currents feedback the process of female mental illness, as well as invisibilize the specific demands of race and social class. While an effort by the participating workers to account for female mental illness through both women's groups and other care spaces is acknowledged, users have suffered institutional violence that expresses itself in both institutional gender violence and institutional racism. In the intersection between race, class, and gender, black and/or poor women are the main victims