School complaint: psychologists' performance and interfaces with Education

Abstract

This paper intends to discuss the recent educational and health politics, and to examine if the studies about the scholar demand in school clinics and in public health services have engendered significant changes in psychologists' practices in primary care public health units. An analysis of dossiers of children who attended, in the second semester of 2005, the area of mental health in primary care units showed that school complaint represented a significant percentage of cases, indicating a tendency in schools towards considering that adjustment difficulties are caused by factors focused in the children and their family, in prejudice of implications of educational, socio-cultural, and economic issues. The study also revealed that the conduct adopted by psychologists, based on a traditional clinical model, tends to reassure this belief, excluding the role of the educational institution in the production and solution of the presented difficulties. We claim that public health psychologists need to review their practice in order to find new forms of facing school complaints, considering all the factors involved in them.