The social workers' practice in mental health: the experience of the CAPS III / CERSAMs of Minas Gerais (Brazil)

Abstract

This article presents partial data from our Doctoral research on the Social Workers’ practice in anti-asylum substitutive services, in the State of Minas Gerais, Brazil, specifically at Psychosocial Attention Centers (CAPS III). The main objective of this study was to identify and question the work carried out by Social Workers in mental health, stemming from the way these professionals understand their professional exercise. Thus, it identifies and questions the professional intervention in this area in order to understand whether these workers embody the critical-dialectical thinking, and whether it is viable to resort to a critical professional intervention in accordance with the guidelines alluded to by the current Social Work’s Critical Professional Project. It was possible to verify how the incorporation of the “Reference Staff Member” gives rise to a relative subsumption of the Social Workers’ practice to this general and unspecific function. This demands from Social Workers specific knowledge on Psychoanalysis and Psychopathology, what contradicts the current social direction of the Brazilian Social Work’s Critical Professional Project, developed within the last 40 years’ professional debate.