“Cultivating Mental Health” The Building of a Space for Dialogue in the Pandemic of Covid-19

Abstract

This work brings the experience report of “Cultivando Saúde Mental”, a space for dialogue built by a group of Mental Health professors from the UFRJ / Macaé Medicine course. Three biweekly meetings were held from May to July 2020, through virtual platforms: in the first, the text “The mirror”, by Machado de Assis, was discussed and the students produced a video, in which they sang the song “Paciência (Lenine)”. In the second, the teacher and poet Gerson Dudus recited the poem, "Still I rise (Still I Rise)" by Maya Angelou, discussed by the group, also, a medical student indicated, played, and sang the song "The world (Pedro Sergio Passarell)." In the third, after collective discussion, we got to the selection of the song "Primavera nos Dentes (João Ricardo and João Apolinário)”,  which was heard by the group, as well as the presence of the poet Marcelo Atahualpa, who indicated the poem of his authorship for reading and debate - “About the Living.” From these meetings, it was possible to build a collective, dialogical space, in which people could take care of themselves, speaking, listening, singing, reciting, reading poems and narratives that gave them pleasure, which made sense at a time when many felt isolated, frightened, sad, anxious, fearful because of the fear of death, the loss of relatives, the future, for fear that we would remain trapped for a long time of computers, cell phones and tablets, hidden behind masks and walls that separated us from each other.