The role of peer support in the recovery process: the experience of the Entrelaços Program.

Abstract

The Brazilian psychiatric reform advocates intersectoral actions that expand the occupation of the territory and the social and cultural representativeness of mental health users. Initiatives that foster the empowerment and the transformation of users and their families into instituting forces capable of reversing the hierarchization and the culture of guardianship and medicalization of substitute services are priorities in the reform. The objective of this study is to understand the experience of users in autonomous community peer support groups deriving from a family psychoeducation program in the context of psychiatric reform. Nine users participating in the groups were interviewed using a semi-structured questionnaire and the data were analyzed according to Max Van Manen's method of hermeneutical phenomenology. Their participation in the program and in peer groups allowed the paradigm shift in mental illness centered on the deterministic view of traditional psychiatry to an optimistic and hopeful view present in the Recovery Movement, decentralized from the disease and mobilizing the subject's potentials, capable of reducing stigma and motivating them to be authors of their own stories. The example of peers and shares focused on proposing objectives and solutions allowed the development of their own expertise, which provided greater self-knowledge and self-determination, expanding the fields of individual and collective, social and cultural action. The experience enabled greater empowerment and contractuality among users, the occupation of new community spaces and the dissemination of the new paradigm, ideals consistent with the current moment of Brazilian psychiatric reform.