30 years after the intervention in Anchieta, where are the beneficiaries of the de Volta Para Casa program of Santos?

Abstract

The de Volta Para Casa Program (Back Home Program – PVC) is one of the Deinstitutionalization Strategies of the Psychosocial Care Network of the Brazilian Unified Health System. Based on the change of perspective proposed by the Italian Democratic Psychiatry, it aims to promote social inclusion and access to human rights for those leaving psychiatric hospitalizations. The objective was to find out who are the PVC beneficiaries habitants of the municipality of Santos, where the deinstitutionalization process was a pioneer, where they live, and where they are now. With a semi-structured interview and participant observation, in a qualitative research, it was identified that the beneficiaries are people over 50 years old, without schooling, black, with an average income of a minimum wage, residents of the tenements in the city center, public transport and public health services users, and attending commercial and religious establishments. By using the hermeneutic-dialectical method and the intersectional perspective, it was concluded that the social markers race/color and origin are related to longer hospitalization, lack of access to decent housing, and greater social exclusion. For a critical praxis, it is necessary to guarantee access to PVC for black women and to adopt strategies for the decolonization of the self in facing the oppressive relationships most experienced by black and migrants beneficiaries, as well as their descendants.