Abstract
People with mental disorders play an important role in the mental health reform process, which involves the creation of new public policies, practices, knowledge, and ways of relating to this experience. Using a guiding question addressing the history of child and adolescent mental health in Brazil and the participation of child and adolescent mental health service users in the policy construction process, a narrative literature review was undertaken framing the main policy developments and advances in this area within the overall context of the Brazilian mental health reform. A search of technical, institutional, and legal documents in the thematic area Mental Health was conducted using a national database. The material analyzed addressed milestones in child and adolescent mental healthcare, highlighting the paths taken in building this field. The article also discusses the participation of child and adolescent mental health service usersin this process in the form of a commentary. Finally, the article highlights the need to guarantee the participation of this group to enable them to play a leading role in the struggle for the construction and realization of rights.
Highlights
The construction and consolidation of child and adolescent mental health in the Brazilian mental health reform
Major advances have been made in child and adolescent mental healthcare in terms of practice and knowledge development, despite the fact that this issue only found its way onto the public agenda somewhat later
In light of the above and considering the 15th anniversary of Law 10.216/014 celebrated in 2016 and the implementation of the mental health reform resulting in the creation of public policies, it is important to understand and highlight the history of the development of child and adolescent mental health policy
Summary
The history of mental health reform in Brazil constitutes a complex social process that goes beyond the simple restructuring of the care model, comprising an ongoing movement with the innovation of actors, concepts, and principles[2,5]. The sociocultural dimension plays a key role in mental health reform given its reverberations in the general social fabric This dimension is intrinsically related to the other three, given that it is possible to change the social imaginary of madness through the creation of new concepts and conceptions regarding mental disorders, transformative practices performed in the RAPS, and the consolidation of laws that establish the rights of people with mental disorders. In this respect, the social and political participation of social actors is an essential aspect of this dimension and enables intrinsic articulation with the others. The essence of this process is the struggle for rights and affirmation of citizenship and, in this sense, it amounts to “an ethical and aesthetic process of recognizing new situations that produce new subjects of rights and new rights for subjects”[2]
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