Narrativas acerca da tentativa de suicídio : considerações sobre a prevenção no contexto da saúde pública

Abstract

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), suicide is a public health problem and, in this sense, a phenomenon liable to intervention with the aim of reducing the number of attempts and self-inflicted deaths. Ministry of Health created, in 2006, the National Suicide Prevention Strategy, that is a set of suicide prevention and health promotion actions, which has as its purpose to foster the debate about the problem on the many sections of society, seeking to strengthen the available resources of health attention and social care network. The preventive strategies are directed by both risk and protection factors. Among risk factors the major ones are: previous suicide attempts, mental disorders (mainly schizophrenia), mood disorders (especially depression), chemical addiction, alcoholism, and recent psychiatric internments. In this sense, the aim of this research is to get to know the experience of suicide attempts and the care accessibility, through the narratives of patients of Colônia Adauto Botelho Hospital. It is a qualitative research, of phenomenological approach, that tried to understand the phenomena by analyzing the experiences narrated by those who attempted suicide. The instrument used to collect the data was an interview, which has the following guiding question: "How was your suicide attempt experience?" The suicidal behavior, as well as the phenomenon of suicide itself, is shrouded in complexity and multicausality and its analysis requires a context that might also favor the peculiarities of the subject who experiences it, in order to avoid generalizations. Independently of the cause that leads a person to attempt suicide, there is a prevailing mental suffering. Therefore, the best way to prevent suicide is to monitor persons at risk, providing them the care not only by the network specialized in mental health but also in the primary services. It was noted the difficulty of access to the Psychosocial Attention Network and the difficulty of the mental health professionals in approaching a patient with suicidal behavior and taking care of them. The study intended to provide insight that can contribute to the improvement of the work of the health professionals in the various contexts of the public health.