O lugar da espiritualidade/religiosidade para psicólogos(as) que atuam em contextos de cuidados paliativos na proximidade da morte

Abstract

The illness and death experience’s reveal the human fragility in the face of life and impose on those who experience illness and those who care and attend them considerable challenges, especially in illnesses where there is no curative therapy. In the 1960s, Palliative Care emerged as a field of care, which belongs to patients and families living an illness process that threaten life itself. Thereby, since the beginning of this process, there was a concern about people’s integral and multidimensional care, which was not only about their physical dimensions, but also about emotional, social, and spiritual aspects, considering spirituality as an important resource in care near death. In the last few decades, studies about spirituality has grown exponentially, and had shown its relevance on both physical and mental health, quality of life, well-being, diseases prevention, and coping, showing itself as relevant human dimension, which is fundamental to develop care strategies, regarding to the processes of health, disease and death, and thus also important to psychology. The aim of this study was to understand the place of spirituality / religiosity in the work of psychologists in Natal-RN who work in palliative care near death. There were seven psychologists participants in this study, with different experience time in palliative care, different spiritual and religious experiences, and different approaches to acting in psychology – who were selected by indication and convenience. It is a qualitative research grounded on Gadamer’s Hermeneutics as a theoretical basis for its construction, analysis and narratives comprehension. It was accomplished a narrative interview using projective scenes. The interviews were recorded and transcribed. The research field diary was used to record the researcher's personal impressions during the study. The dialogue with the participants narratives originated the following chapters: (1) “Palliative Care and death: building a history of caring for life until the end”, which brings different human attitudes towards death and dying and a brief history of palliative care, which since the beginning it has been marked by the inclusion spirituality in care, an aspect also illustrated by participants’ words; (2) “Spirituality / Religiosity: the concepts of health-illness-death and the psychologists’ conceptions” that exposes spirituality, religiosity and religion in health, illness and death process and the reveal the psychologists’ concepts of religiosity and spirituality; (3) “Spirituality and religiosity in the psychology spiritual care near death” which was focused on the relationship between spirituality and psychology, mainly in a palliative care context near death, highlighting the difficulties and challenges to include spirituality in care, although detach the power that spirituality has above psychology care near death, both for patient and their families care and for the health professional's own care. Thus, from the understanding of these professionals practice and the place that spirituality occupies in it, it is defended the importance of considering and including spirituality / religiosity in health care practices, especially when dealing with care near death, in rescue to humanization and integrality of care.