“Não Converso com Demente”: intersecções entre direito e saúde mental

Abstract

This article presents a Foucauldian Discourse Analysis of enunciations regarding one of the judicial processes composing a Master dissertation on Psychology from Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora (MG). The genesis of the research was the fact that a user from a Center of Psychosocial Attention (CAPS) reported his guardian for negligence and bad-treatment to a Promoter of Justice who, later on, refused to receive him, asserting: “I don’t talk to lunatics”. The research, of documentary nature, whose inclusion criterion was being a filed investigation record dealing with a diagnosis of mental disorder, was held with three judicial processes from users of the CAPS above mentioned. Subject positions that are assigned by the legal discourse to people with mental disorders were discussed, as well as the relationship between the diagnosis of mental disorder and another enunciations, and the relation among guardianship, non-imputability and citizenship. It is possible to affirm that legal discourse designates derogatory subject positions to people with mental disorder, supported by medical knowledge/power to enunciate truths about them. Citizenship is denied through processes of interdiction and guardianship. There is a gap between the Civil Code and the Civil Process Code, and the proposals of the Psychiatry Reform, especially regarding the rights of people with mental disorder.