Usos e desusos da categoria Transtornos de Conduta em adolescentes em conflito com a lei: genealogia, medicalização e práticas em saúde mental no contexto socioeducativo.

Abstract

The national and international literature points out a correlation between adolescents in conflict with the law and psychiatric disorders. However, a topic that has not yet been explored is the sociological analysis of this association, based on the premise that the use of these diagnoses can be an instrument of classification and management of conditions that could also be understood as unfolding of the precariousness and social vulnerability of these individuals. In fact, this population does not live indifferently to the processes of medicalization in the contemporary and its characteristics are often interpreted as pathological states that stand out for their social reality. The purpose of this work was to understand the social, epistemological and technical nuances involved in the meeting of mental health knowledge with this population, mediated by the socio-educational institution, in order to identify whether and how a medicalization process of the conduct of individuals in internment in these institutions would occur. In this sense, we seek to understand the process of production, transformation and uses of the diagnostic category of Conduct Disorders, as well as the relationship between this psychiatric classification, social markers of difference and how to manage adolescents in conflict with the law in a specific social context. As a methodology, we followed a mental health team from the General Department of Socio-educational Actions (DEGASE); we conducted semi-structured interviews with its members (health professionals); and analyzed some files of adolescents in conflict with the law in order to understand and analyze the possible psychiatric diagnoses most associated with this institutional context. What has been verified is that the mental health team does not make use of the psychiatric categories, since psychic suffering is most often due to the institutional context or previous life histories crossed by the violence. Thus, the category of Psychic Suffering appears as a counterpoint to the idea of Mental Disorder. The social context and the freedom-deprived period also emerge with greater relevance in the documents of the adolescents, who become a bridge between the legal field and the socio-educational institution. Our hypothesis is that documents have a dual function of social control and, at the same time, of denunciation. The report of the professionals seems to put them in a critical position against the reduction of these lives to a psychiatric category. Likewise, the majority positioning of the team goes against the scientific literature that affirms an exorbitant prevalence of Mental Disorders in this population.