INSTITUCIONALIZAÇÃO E MEDICALIZAÇÃO DA INFÂNCIA E ADOLESCÊNCIA: ATRAVESSAMENTOS EM UM SERVIÇO DE ACOLHIMENTO INSTITUCIONAL

Abstract

The debate about medicalization has become more frequent in the field of health due to its effects on social control and subjectification. In this sense, childhood ends up becoming a medicalizable object. The objective of this study is to understand how the processes of medicalization of children and adolescents express themselves in an institutional care service (ICS) - specifically the Foster Home modality - by problematizing the practices of the technical team professionals. The methodology is qualitative in nature, based on the research-intervention approach, where reality is produced through the act of research. The intervention field was an institutional care service - Foster Home modality - located in a small municipality in the interior of Paraná, Brazil, with the technical team members - coordinator, social worker, and psychologist - participating. For data production, 4 meetings were held in the form of focus groups, considering the group as a device. The research diary was used as a space to reflect on the non-verbal implications and movements of the research process. The study was approved through its project presented to the Ethics and Research Committee (COMEP) of UNICENTRO, Irati campus, under Opinion No. 5,951,521, with review on 03/17/2023. Data analysis was carried out using analyzers triggered in the research process. The results and discussion point towards 3 lines of analysis: 1. The outside-within: an itinerant position in researching - discusses the analysis of implication, problematizing the itinerant role that the researcher occupied, as a worker and researcher, regarding the audit of subjectivity and complexity; 2. "To think that our function is... to normalize, standardize, actually, standardize that... adolescent": the crossings of Institutionalization and Medicalization - synthesizes a debate raised by multiple analyzers emerged in this research journey, pointing to a complex discussion situated at the intersection between Social Assistance and Health, bringing up the discussion of health logics in the practice of Social Assistance, with the intention of establishing clues and perhaps, a preliminary approach between the institutionalization process and the medicalization movement, identifying crossings and transversal movements. Concepts situated mainly in the Mental Health field are operated, such as compensation areas, total institutions, classificatory movements aimed at human life, as well as medicalizing agencies within the network and broader social and structural issues that are actualized in the micropolitical level in this scenario; 3. "And with this adolescent, well... I, personally, felt a little lost at times, in knowing what was hers, what could be, well... related to mental illness or the aftermath of what she went through, right?": between the naming and objectification of psychic suffering - in this last line of analysis, the relationships between the ICS and Mental Health demands are discussed, between different lines of force, crossings and transversal movements, the conception of psychic suffering and related processes, based on the motivation for admissions, the service's operating dynamics and its symptoms, as well as the ethics of conducting the work. Finally, considerations are pointed out about the process, such as the complex position of the researcher, transversal movements and crossings between Institutionalization and Medicalization, the relationship with small municipalities in generating demands, tensions, and forces, as well as processes of self-analysis in the discussion of Mental Health and the identification of adult centrism as a way to redefine listening to children and adolescents.