Debate speakers: Oswaldo Ferreira Leite Netto (IOP Psychoanalyst); Laura Andrade (IOP Dept of Psychiatric Epidemiology)
Attendees: Staff including psychiatrists, psychiatric nurses, psychoanalysts
In a very old auditorium inside the hospital, 40 members of staff watched the film. It was psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, psychiatric nurses, students of the above. When the film finished, Laura, the organiser, opened for questions. It was silent for something like a minute. But everyone seemed ok with the silence. And then the response was so interesting. They were generally quite emotional. One man said he felt ashamed when he saw all Rosangela's medicine and that people should not be but are taking medicine when there are other, better ways to improve problems of mental health. And he said that he questioned if, when Vito told Rosangela to take her Rivotril medicine, it was actually what he thought was right or rather what he had been told to do/ say in such moments of stress. He said he felt “ashamed that we give medicine when many times it was much more than medicine.” One woman said the film is incredible. She said there is an issue that needs to be addressed that we treat people here in the hospital but have no idea of their social surroundings. Some, who work in poorer areas, said they personally are used to seeing people like Rosangela but that generally in the IoP people will never see or know these places, and therefore not really be able to deal with the problem fully. A woman said she could not talk for a while after the film because it affected her too much. She was choked up when she was saying this. Someone talked about the line Rosangela said she felt like tourist when she gets changed and walks through the shopping mall. There was a kind of nodding and sound of agreement in the whole room. Every place we screened it, people noted that line more than any other.
They had told us before that the discussion could only last 15 minutes because of time and that people had to go at 11:30. But it went on for nearly an hour.
The key speaker, Dr Netto, said: “It was very important to show this at our meeting. Personally, it reenforced in me the need for political positioning, even as a psychiatrist and psychotherapist…the desire to break with the established order! I am grateful to the filmmakers for their willingness to go out on the field, to let themselves be emotionally affected, this conviviality with individuals who live excluded, who experience the experience of a naturalised horror. I think that as therapists we cannot ignore our socio-political reality, which is presented to us in all its clarity, the facts with all its brutality. It makes clear the main characteristic of life in the favela, the radical experience of social humiliation and the loss of the right to citizenship. ‘The reality of Brazil that is not shown’ says Jorginho, the DJ neighbour. I say that it is the reality that we privileged do not see.”
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