This paper shows concepts and practices of health professionals regarding cases of self-injury. It is problematized the existent gap between professionals training based in the biomedical model and practices, in which are presented dimension not considered for biomedicine. The empiric reference is a public emergency hospital in the city of São Paulo. The qualitative nature study was developed by observing attendances, consults to medical records and interviews with health professionals. The underlying question is related to intelligibility model of the illness, based in the body as a privileged locus of care, and illness as accidental event. Contradictively, self-injury situations (suicide attempts, drug and alcohol abuse) are analyzed as intentionally events, consequence of a choice, implicating no identification of their authors as patients or victims of care.
Self-injury; Suicide; Biomedicine; Health practices; Violence and health