Paiva, Ilana Lemos deGarcia, Renata Monteiro2018-05-162018-05-162018-04-09GARCIA, Renata Monteiro. Medicalização da infância e políticas sociais: processos de submissão e resistência na produção da economia da diferença. 2018. 224f. Tese (Doutorado em Psicologia) - Centro de Ciências Humanas, Letras e Artes, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Natal, 2018.https://repositorio.ufrn.br/jspui/handle/123456789/25216Medicalization is a social issue impacting different aspects of daily life. One of its most noticeable dimensions is the prevalence among children, especially regarding behavior control and its pathologization. Preliminary data collection conducted by the author, which motivated the present study, identified an increase of 100% in the number of children enrolled at public schools in a municipality in the interior of Paraíba who were diagnosed as mentally ill between 2010 and 2014. Moreover, an increase of 400% in the access to the Continued Cash Benefit Program for people between the ages of 4 and 17 was verified. This thesis aimed at analyzing the relationship between the phenomenon of rapid increase in the number of children diagnosed as mentally ill, the pathologization of children and the access to social policies in this context. The study is based on dialectical materialism so as to analyze the historical and political processes which fostered the emergence and development of these issues. The methodology included document and field research. In the first stage, current legislation and official reports on the local reality and the structure of social policies in the fields of health, education and social welfare were analyzed. In the second stage, five semistructured interviews were conducted with the parents or guardians of the children diagnosed with mental disability living in the municipality focused on in this study. A total of nine visits to institutions which assist the population regarding the policies considered in this study were carried out and the observations recorded in a field diary. The collected material was categorized and analyzed considering the theoretical framework in order tounder pin the discussions and conclusions of this doctoral thesis. Conclusions indicate that the complex relationships between the diagnoses of mental disability, the pathologization of children and social policies are shaped within a network of financial and political values which we named as Difference Economy. The importance of the Continued Cash Benefit Program to the survival of many families was also verified, as well as the need for critical reflections on the policies and their implications in keeping a socially unequal model and the current social order.Acesso AbertoPatologizaçãoDiagnósticoDeficiênciaDesigualdade socialBenefício de prestação continuadadoctoralThesisCNPQ::CIENCIAS HUMANAS::PSICOLOGIA