Comprensión del actual proceso de medicalización en el contexto de la salud mental

Resumen

Purpose: Medicalization is understood as a process that occurs as a transformation of socialissues to individual and organic problems that require medical intervention. This research proposed to analyze the scientific literature on medicalization related to the context of mental health. Method: Articles search was carried out on Scielo and Pepsic databases, raging dates from 2000 to 2015, using the following descriptors: medicalization, mental health and psychiatric reform. The analysis of the data was envisaged by the analytical-institutional reference, assisting in the composition of two analytical lines. Results: In the first one, we sought to identify the understandings about medicalization, while discussing the differences between medicalization and medicamentalization. In the second line we seek to map the forces that permeate the process ofmedicalization, highlighting biomedical knowledge, biological psychiatry and pharmaceutical industry, social participation and attention models. Conclusion: We conclude that the concept of medicalization, in its different nuances, allows denaturalization movements of mental health practices, allowing to interrogate the relationships of established knowledge and power.