The transposition of the São Francisco river: literary art-facts about mental health and the tale of mega-project implementation in Brazil

Abstract

The justification for mega-project implementation in Brazil permeates discourses of political, economic, social and environmental interest aimed at promoting its development. This survey aims to understand how stories about the implementation of mega-projects in territories in which peasant people live on a daily basis have been told, as well as to look at the interface between mental health and mega-projects to provoke reflections that enables the creation of interventional actions for the mental health care of people in rural areas. This integrative review uses four databases. A total of 36 writings were integrated for analysis, which pointed out important considerations: the implementation of mega-projects impacts several different areas, leading to a process of vulnerability experienced by the people who live at the site of these construction works. As for the mental health of the rural population, its understanding in the literature is still shown from the focus on the presence of the disorder. Anchored in the health-disease binomial, it makes the plurality of meanings mental health has for rural people invisible and shows a lack of interest in knowing the paths taken in their own territory for mental health care referrals by their knowledge, cosmologies, and traditions.