"Primeiro teria que abrir uma aba na escola, para a gente ter esse tipo de conversa" : representações sociais de adolescentes estudantes sobre a prática de autolesão

Abstract

From the psychosocial perspective on adolescents, this study seeks to characterize "adolescence" as a cultural invention, being a way of being in the world guided by the cultural context. In this attempt, the present work aims to understand which are the social representations about self-injury for adolescent students of state public schools, in the city of Cuiabá-MT. For this, the study is anchored in the Theory of Social Representations, through a psychosocial look at a complex phenomenon. To this end, it resorts to discussions about the Social Construction of Adolescence, present in the studies of Bock (2004, 2007), Koshino (2011), Groppo (2017), Leal and Facci (2014) as opposed to a perspective that announces adolescence as a natural phase of human development. In addition, the study assumes the perspective of data production, which understands that research data are not collected, but constructed together with the participants. In this sense, 8 adolescents were interviewed, aged between 15 and 18 years old, 5 girls and 3 boys, students of the three years of high school, from 3 schools of the state network, located in Cuiabá, Mato Grosso, who had no history self-injury practice. Due to the context of the covid-19 pandemic, the survey was carried out in a remote environment, using the Skype software. Furthermore, WhatsApp was also used as a mediating tool in the relationship between researcher and participants. As data production instruments, a semi-structured interview was used, whose script proposed the technique "A vida um por fio" (ANDRADE, SANTOS, LOPES, 2017), as a mediator in the production of narratives and for understanding and analyzing the objectivations of the announced social representations. The data were analyzed from the Content Analysis, according to Bardin (1977). Thus, the data were first described, from the semantic criterion and, later, analyzed considering the frequency of the answers. following categories: 1. From the unfamiliar to self-injury as psychopathology; 2. The subject's responsibility for psychic suffering; 3. "The non-place" of adolescence; 4. The absence of listening spaces; 5. The acceptance and suffering of peers; 6. "Opening a tab at school": the power of a welcoming school; and 7. The place of the internet and social media. as met Produced ephors were categorized as follows: 1. Feelings; 2. Causes; 3. Overcoming; and 4. The scar as a representation of the Act itself. These made it possible to identify the objectivations of the adolescents' social representations about self-injury practices. Furthermore, the speech announced by the adolescents presents the understanding about their experiences in a complex way, establishing a dialogue with social knowledge and problematizing their experiences, also allowing them to speak from their perspective about the phenomenon of self-injury. It can be seen that the anchorages about the object are centered on a medical perspective and widely disseminated in the reified universe. However, at the same time, the adolescents demonstrated to be aware of the social development situation in which they find themselves, mentioning that this phase of development can affect psychic suffering, which is characterized as cognitive polyphasia, when subjects operate by different knowledge and ways of thinking. Finally, it was also possible to reflect on the formative potential of the school, which, by being characterized as a space that promotes mental health, can favor the development of processes of meaning of reality within social groups.