Vivendo com hanseníase: representações sociais e impactos no cotidiano

• Autor(a) principal: Vieira, Michelle Christini Araújo
• Data de Publicação: 2010
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo (riUfes)
• Texto Completo: http://repositorio.ufes.br/handle/10/3018
• topic: Social representation; Hansen’s Disease; Leprosy; Impact of the disease; Nursing; Lepra; Impacto da doença; Representación social; Impacto de la enfermedad; Enfermería; Psicologia; Representações sociais; Enfermagem; Hanseníase; 159.9

This study aimed to verify the social representations of leprosy and the disease impacts on patient’s daily lives who had been affected and were discharged. Ten women and eight men were individually interviewed. A semi-structured interview script was used, which included social demographic aspects, Free Words Association Test (TALP), mental images, in addition to guiding questions based on the participant’s experience with the disease, addressing family and social aspects, feelings and perceptions that came from their experience. The data obtained were subjected to content analysis technique proposed by Bardin, categorized and analyzed based on the Theory of Social Representations. As a result of TALP, categories were obtained, such as Disease, Information about the illness, Prejudice, Reactions and deformities / disabilities of the illness, Feeling and Treatment. As for the mental images, we found that the image built by the participants referred to the leper, represented by the spotted body, a sad person and an ugly and wounded body. During the process of analyzing the interviews, we identified units of meaning divided in feelings, family, friends, work, reactions and deformities / disabilities of the disease. We found that the predominant element of the social representation of this research is anchored in leprosy, as evidenced by the elements exposed by the interviewed such as prejudice, fear, secrecy and confidentiality, present in all interviews. The fear of being discovered as a carrier of the disease meant losing their identity and assuming the identity of the "leper". We conclude that, under a general view, virtually all participants symbolized the negative social construction around "leprosy. We observed that the demands for mental health were revealed in almost all evocations carried out about leprosy. We realized that this has gone unnoticed by professionals. The reference to negative feelings of sadness, grief, fear, depression, in addition to the presence of pain, deformities in the body and prejudice was evident in all stages of the research and indicates the need for research and monitoring the condition of the individual beyond the specific aspects of remission.