Discursive practices and democratic participation: negotiating language use in mental health services

Collective health refers to a field of knowledge that was developed in Latin America in the 1970s. In Brazil, it has been intrinsically related to the creation of the Unified Health System. One of the key notions in this new health system is integrality of care: the development of responses that are sensitive to the health needs of the population. This study takes integrality as its context and explores the meaning of mental suffering for users of mental health services. Three aspects are discussed: the population's lack of knowledge about what is offered; the difficulty in translating 'mental suffering' into a language understood by health care professionals; and the tendency to deny this suffering because of the fear of stigmatization.