A medicalização como estratégia biopolítica: Um estudo sobre o consumo de psicofármacos no contexto de um pequeno município do Rio Grande do Sul

Abstract

The goal of this research was to comprehend how the consumption of psychoactive prescribed drugs was legitimated as a technology of the self inside the medicalization device (dispositf). We concluded that this is a technology that incurs on the body because it's attached to contemporary modes of subjectification. The analysis presented here refers to Boa Vista das Missões, a small town in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. We conducted a six months field research and interviewed a sample of 400 inhabitants. The speech and data analysis intended to give visibility to the statements present in the discursive formations and which define and explain the consumption of prescribed psychoactive drugs by 53% of the local population. We used Michel Foucault's genealogical perspective to guide our understanding of the data and to query the production of lifestyles characterized by individualized and totalized forms of control. As a starting point we described the history of the introduction of psychoactive drugs in our culture in order to understand the dimension of the consumption in this specific context. The analysis identified the statements thread in the interior of the medicalization device (dispositif) that sustains a form of biopower based on the tripod of "dependence - welfarism - individualism".