O quesito raça/cor nos estudos de caracterização de usuários de Centro de Atenção Psicossocial

Abstract

Based on the review of the scientific literature, this study aims to present the profile of the users who attend Psychosocial Care Centers (PCCs) to verify if the race/color factor is considered in it. We carried out the bibliographic research between May and August 2015 on Scholar Google and on the Virtual Health Library databases: Medline, BDENF, Paho, Index Psicologia and Lilacs. Our search strategies were: (1) “mental health services”/“serviços de saúde mental” AND “epidemiological profile”/“perfil epidemiológico” and (2) “mental health services”/“serviços de saúde mental” AND “health profile”/“perfil de saúde”. Two reviewers assessed the titles and abstracts of 452 articles retrieved. Thus, we deleted the repeated articles and those that did not meet the profile of PCCs users, remaining 17 of them. From these, only three articles had data on race/color, but none of them developed a discussion on this information. We found out that two PCCs proportionally have more black patients compared with any other population and that the use of race/color to characterize users of PCCs services is still not so common, despite being considered an important social marker – this is how the Brazilian society deals with racial inequalities: as they were not real, which contributes to their strengthening. These inequalities have shown to be persistent, making it necessary for academics and public health managers to go beyond the recommendations of the conferences and define strategies to face such issues, thus producing and reproducing helpful knowledge in its developing and implementation of these measures.