The dismantling of social protection and Psychosocial Care Network: An analysis of mental health care for adolescent drug users in the socio-educational care

Abstract

This study aims to analyze the mental health care offered to adolescents serving semi-liberty socioeducational measures in the state of Paraná. It is a qualitative, field-based research study, whose corpus originated from semi-structured interviews conducted with 16 workers involved in the execution of socio-educational measures. Socio-educational care, mental health, and social public policies are understood in this study from a historicaldialectical materialist perspective. Content analysis, as proposed by Laurence Bardin, is used for data analysis. The research findings indicate that the most frequently used resource within the Psychosocial Care Network to address the demand related to drug abuse is the Psychosocial Care Center. The gap in care for the child and adolescent population, identified in the literature, is evident in the relationship between socio-educational care and the Psychosocial Care Network, considering the low diversification of this resource in the state studied. The dismantling of social protection in Brazil negatively impacts the expansion and implementation of the Psychosocial Care Network’s facilities under the logic of psychosocial care. Intersectoral collaboration is also compromised, given that addressing the identified needs requires strengthening various social public policies