Brazilian Psychiatric Reform: critical arguments of psychiatric hospital professionals

Abstract

The Brazilian Psychiatry Reform was consolidated after the creation of some services and devices that came to replace the asylum psychiatry system. Yet, psychiatry hospitals go on existing, and were not totally modified and are still part of the network of mental health services. This article analyzes arguments developed by professionals from two psychiatric hospitals in the city of João Pessoa, in Paraíba, to criticize the Brazilian Psychiatric Reform, focusing on the rhetorical resources mobilized to present them as objective and factual. It is a study with a qualitative approach, in which 42 interviews were obtained, submitted to discourse analysis, according to the proposal of Discursive Social Psychology. Professionals carry out a semantic and pragmatic movement that consists of affirming the ineffectiveness of the Psychiatric Reform and, at the same time, denying any opposition to the values and principles that support it. The statements about the supposed ineffectiveness of the Reform are presented as solid and objective with the use of different resources to produce factuality. Through this process, they present themselves as enlightened, tolerant people guided by the values of the Enlightenment, people who produce a credible account of the Brazilian Psychiatric Reform when they criticize its way of functioning.