Itinerários terapêuticos em busca do bem viver: saúde mental na comunidade indígena Mendonça do Amarelão (RN)

Abstract

The present work undertakes as objective to build interlocutions with the Potiguara Mendonça of Amarelão (João Câmara/RN), aiming to understand the therapeutic itineraries related to “mental health” that are produced among its people. To do so, it comprehends a qualitative and exploratory research that is supported by decolonial studies, drawing attention to the need to approach the knowledge that has been invisibilized by colonialism. We understand mental health through the ethical-political principle of the “Good Living” (Bien Vivir) – sumak kawsay in Kíchwa, suma Qamaña in Aymara – which raises the human being as part of a broad community in which people not only relate to each other, but also to elements of nature, territory, spirituality, in an interdependent relationship. Based on this perspective, an indigenous “mental health” becomes possible through the alignment with the projects of a “good living” among people and communities. The therapeutic itineraries, on the other hand, allow us to relate formal and informal care devices that follow in the paths of the subjects in dealing with their own health practices. We used as research instruments sociodemographic questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, and field diaries. Seven male and female residents of Amarelão (RN), over the age of 18 and recognized – by people from the community or by the health care agents working in the territory – as people who are going through or have gone through situations that affect their mental health, participated in the research. The findings of the study show a non-insertion of the community in the SESAI, so that health care is established via SUS. We also noticed an incorporation of various fields of knowledge through the itineraries of the participants, who accessed devices such as ESF, psychiatric hospitals, and CAPS. At the same time, they report the incorporation of practices of community healers, as well as the use of so-called “bush medicines”, connected to ancestral knowledge from Mendonça people. The understandings of the “good living” produced bring about a complementarity, reciprocity, and relationality that encompasses community bonds and relationships with the land woven by the participants. Far from generalizing about the Mendonça people as a whole, they point out to possible paths of “good living” woven within Amarelão.