Social representation and subjectivity of becoming mentally ill

• Autor(es):

  Brito, Heleni Barreira de (Universidade de Fortaleza);

  Catrib, Ana Maria Fontenelle (Universidade de Fortaleza).

• Fonte:

  Estudos de Psicologia (Natal); volume 9, número 2, páginas 285-296. Agosto 2004.

• Assuntos:

  representation;

  subjectivity;

  becoming mentally ill.

• Resumo:

  The purpose of the study was to think madness through the perspective of social psychology, identifying the net of symbolic meanings that articulate themselves. Fifty-two interviews were carried out with individuals diagnosed as mood disturbance patients. They were provided outpatient treatment for at least one year, in a specialized psychiatric unit in Fortaleza's municipal institution. The content of the speeches were gathered through semi-structured interviews, using content analysis. The process of social representations' construction of madness is a dynamic one, in which the meanings are often shared and re-elaborated. Social representations of madness identified on speeches take place mainly around figurative schemes, such as: out of oneself, disease, emotional uneasiness and reality distortion; the ways to represent the causes of own psychological illness are organized in figurative schemes and unities of meaning related to loss, myths, and nervous disease; causes attributed to psychological illness were identified as: loss, myths, and nerves' disease.

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