Abstract
This study aimed to understand the social management of madness from the perspective of deinstitutionalization by means of participant observation of daily life scenes of residents at Therapeutic Residential Care (TRC). This is a qualitative social health research with ethnographic inspirations and phenomenological orientation. Participants consisted of ten former residents of a psychiatric hospitals, half of whom are female and with mean age of 60 years old, current residing in a TRC of a city located in a Southeast region of Brazil. The results indicate 12 scenes of coexistence within the collective space of the houses, social circulation in the neighborhood streets, and access to commercial, health, and cultural services. Daily and in different ways, the participants experience the appropriation or reappropriation of body, house, and street. In this sense, these scenes comprise a process of vivification of the self that can depart from self-expropriation and reach incorporation, establishing relations of social belonging. These findings show that purchasing power and social constructions regarding residents’ body in the encounter with different actors are circumstances that can interfere in this process. The re-authoring conversations, narrative practices based on social constructionism, and everyday practices and tactics, from Certeau’s perspective, are theories that help understanding and instrumentalizing the social agency of residents of TRC in public and private spaces.
Keywords:
Deinstitutionalization; Mental health; Therapeutic Residential Care; Psychiatric Reform