From prescription to listening: Effects of gaining autonomy and medication on health workers

Abstract

The use of psychotropic drugs and rights related to the choice of prescribed treatments has been gaining ground in literature. This article reports aspects of a qualitative research that intervene in 10 health services (primary and secondary care) at two Brazilian cities (Campinas and Amparo, in São Paulo). Following the principle of Brazilian Psychiatric Reform, defending users’ rights to decide about their treatment, we worked with the gaining autonomy and medication (GAM). GAM comes from Canada and proposes to “empower” users regarding the use of drugs in their therapeutic projects. This article aims to evaluate the impact’s perception of the workers moderators of the GAM groups. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the GAM Group’s moderators before and after the intervention, narratives were constructed under the precepts of Gadamer’s hermeneutics. Workers who experienced the strategy took a more critical role in relation to their clinical practices, and identified, in the horizontal methodology, group and directed to listening for the appreciation of the voice of users, an experience that could promote a more flexible clinic and conducive to the joint construction of actions. GAM’s experimentation in the this research allowed to analyze it in relation to other Brazilian references to the field of collective health such as popular education and person-centered medicine, operating an interesting cultural hybridization.