Substitutive mental health service and iatrogeny?: a reflection about this question

Abstract

This paper presents a qualitative research that studies the discourse of three pairs of mental health professionals, formed by a psychologist and a psychiatrist in three different Day-Hospitals. Each pair talked about the first psychiatric treatment of a patient that had just started to be treated. The talk was registered using a half-structured interview recorded and thoroughly transcribed in order to be analyzed according to the discourse analysis (d.a.) proposed by Marlene Guirado as a procedure for Institutional Psychology. The general objective of the research was accomplished when the position of the patients in the discourse of the interviewing agents was characterized as one in which they were seen as representatives of a pre-defined group of patients with specific contingencies. This position has favored their introduction in the discourse of the interviewed in the following circumstances: the existence of a disease, a disease with chronic quality, the condition of an object of conscientization, the condition of an object to be observed, the condition of an object to be improved, the condition of an object to be adapted. The specific objective of this research was accomplished when some of the factors defined as iatrogenic were observed, in the discourse of the interviewed.