“We are also institutionalized!”: everyday life, mental health and work processes in the perception of the teams of socio-educational units

Abstract

The article aims to describe the perceptions of the workers about the institutional daily life and its possible correlations with the factors that generate mental suffering and crises in the public assisted in seven Socio-Education Youth Centers (Censes) in Paraná. Instruments of data collection were: focus groups, interviews and participant observations, being the data interpreted by the principles of hermeneutics. We observed a non-standardization of the Censes structures and the workers’ perception indicated less institutionalized dynamics in smaller structures. Occupational deprivation seemed to signal the increase of mental suffering of the adolescents, contrary to the access to a repertoire of significant activities, which seemed to promote mental health. It is concluded that institutionalization can generate mental suffering for both the adolescents and the teams working in the Censes, with the structuring of daily life being one of its determinants.