Ideology and mental health: Analysis of the discourse of workers in the psychosocial area

Abstract

This study proposes to analyze the discourse of workers in a Psychosocial Care Center regarding the operation of the ideologies which express the dimension of social practices incorporated at this service. This was a qualitative research, and the corpus was originated by transcription of semi-structured interviews, applied to 17 out of the 25 workers of a substitute service in a city in southern Brazil. The theoretical-methodological analysis of the operation of ideologies by John Thompson was used. The discourse analysis of the workers' practice shows a plurality of ideological manifestations, so that they reserve the changing practices with innovative and creative features such as the maintenance of obsolete models, hindering or even preventing these changes. In conclusion, these issues should be worked continuously in everyday services, being a major challenge to the consolidation of the psychiatric reform in Brazil.