Avizinhando experiências: histórias de uma cidade com a loucura

Abstract

This work aims to tell stories of experiences with madness in a city. The city, which in this research tells some of its countless stories, is Cariacica, chosen to host the first public psychiatric hospital in Espírito Santo state, Adauto Botelho Hospital. The existence of this hospital produced marks in the city, which got used to keeping madness at a distance, locked in the walls of the asylum. After the opening of the physical gates of Adauto Botelho, madness began to inhabit other spaces in Cariacica, also chosen to host the first houses with aiming at serving as housing for some of the former inmates of the hospital who lost their family ties. These houses were named Therapeutic Residential Services. Then, moving from the question: what the city of Cariacica tells us about the ways in which madness was welcomed in its spaces beyond the asylum space, this research bet on a methodology of becoming closer to experiences, with support from Oral History. “To become closer ‘’ is understood by approaching, a way of approaching the city based on the stories it tells and, in this process, summoning the experimentation of new relationships with madness, which now inhabits other spaces in there. Then, it is believed that the experience takes us away from ourselves, transforms us and leads us to be something else that, until then, we did not know. Hence, the stories that make up this research are a mixture between those experienced by the researcher together with those of mental health professionals and residents who have experienced (and are still experiencing) the encounter of madness with the city from the Conjunto Residencial Santana, located in Cariacica city. From the narratives presented, we are invited to approach this city, and together with it, to produce other ways of experiencing madness in the city.