Estar en ambulatorio: Aportes desde las ciencias sociales al campo de la salud mental en Argentina mediante un análisis sobre sentidos y experiencias de usuarios y usuarias en la ciudad de Mar del Plata

Abstract

Las transformaciones políticas, jurídicas y socioculturales del campo de la salud mental suponen el pasaje de un modelo de atención hospitalocéntrico a un modelo de atención comunitaria. Con tensiones, este proceso da lugar a una jerarquización de los tratamientos psiquiátricos ambulatorios. Como un aporte a los debates acerca de las transformaciones del hospitalocentrismo, el artículo presenta resultados de una investigación cualitativa realizada durante 2015-2018 en la provincia de Buenos Aires, Argentina. Se realizaron entrevistas semiestructuradas a personas con diagnóstico de salud mental en tratamiento ambulatorio. Los resultados se exponen en tres apartados.The political, juridical and sociocultural transformations of the mental health field involve the move from a hospital-centric model of attention to another communitarian. With tensions, this process allows a ranking of the psychiatric outpatient treatment. As a contribution to the discussions about the transformations in hospital-centrism, this article shows the results of a qualitative research made through 2015-2018 in the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Semistructured interviews were made to people with a mental health diagnosis in outpatient treatment. The results are exposed in three topics. The first one, travelling through the institutions, introduces the meanings about the journey through therapeutic and bureaucratic activities. The second topic, organizing the medication, analyses how the pharmacological treatment operates in different aspects of life. Finally, in the topic referred to fulfilling the prescriptions, this article addresses how the guidelines given in the journeys regulate the behaviors, the bonds, and the use of language and time. The conclusions include that the institutional journeys, the use of psychopharmaceuticals and the given prescriptions constitute normalization strategies which are indefinitely sustained, and which acquire a circular logic of meanings, practices and subjectivities.