Search

There has been an alarming rise in suicide attempts among Indigenous people in Brazil, leading to national concerns about the provision of psychosocial care and professional support. In this study, we make an attempt to understand the perspectives of professionals in assisting Indigenous people from a specific group, the Inỹ, and identify the specific challenges of addressing issues through the mental health care system related specifically to suicide prevention. Using a qualitative approach with participant observation and semi-structured interviews, the research included Indigenous and their families assisted by three public institutions and the professionals that work in public psychosocial assistance. For this paper, we examined the tensions, conflicts, and challenges of the healthcare professionals at one of these institutions, a Psychosocial Care Center in the state of Goiás/Brazil. For data analysis, a sociocultural protocol was built to identify dialogical tensions between the different thematic fields of mental health care. The findings reveal that the theme of suicide was an important concern in the daily work with the community. Still, there were significant issues related to the assumptions, methodology, and meaning of care between the professionals and the community, on account of which the objective of the programme to address suicide attempts had not been effective or successful. The discussion of the results raises several critical questions about the possible contributions of dialogical cultural psychology in the context of Indigenous health. Also, it has important implications for the global issue of the wellbeing of Indigenous people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From 2015 to 2016, an epidemic of births of children with Congenital Zika Virus Syndrome emerged in Brazil, and the state of Bahia concentrated the highest incidence of cases. The official health guidelines recommended that the affected children and their families should be supported by interdisciplinary teams of early intervention. This paper aims to deepen the comprehension of regulation and affective-semiotic mediation processes involved in the early intervention with children with Congenital Zika Virus Syndrome and their families. It focus on the experiences of a professional interviewed in a public health service in Salvador, Bahia – Brazil, through narrative analysis and the theoretical-methodological foundations of Cultural Psychology of the Semiotic Dynamics. These approaches allowed the understanding of the processes of construction of meanings, symbolic action and affective-semiotic regulation. The care of Congenital Zika Virus Syndrome children by professionals relates to disquieting experiences, inter subjectivity, meaning construction, affections and symbolic actions. These dynamic processes allowed the professional to better adapt to regulation and affective-semiotic mediation, as well as her own performance in face of children and their families. This analysis emphasizes the reflections of health care practices and their repercussions in the quality of the assistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]