A study on the incorporation of occupational therapy to the context of actions in mental health and health of people with disabilities in the city of São Paulo from 1989 to 1993

Abstract

This study discusses the incorporation of occupational therapists to mental health care and the health of people with disabilities in public municipal services in São Paulo (from 1989 to 1993). The research was carried out through interviews with professionals who worked in assistance and/or planning and management of services, as well as by documentary research and application of questionnaires, better characterizing occupational therapists' training and professional experience and their assistance activities. Occupational therapy has played a significant role in the consolidation of the assistance to this population. Its view changes the emphasis from disability and mental suffering to the person's concrete needs, seeking answers that will facilitate the improvement of both mediate and immediate life conditions. This way a new assistance culture in occupational therapy has arisen which, in opposition to the previous prevailing notion of hospital care, contributed to the consolidation of assistance in day hospitals, centers for conviviality and cooperative, psychiatric wards and emergencies, general hospitals and basic health units. The influence of the mental health care approach (based on group attention, interdisciplinary follow-up and the usage of non-traditional therapeutic resources) became evident over the other problematic areas taken care of by the professionals. The incorporation of about two hundred OTs to São Paulo Health Secretary was the outcome of both the implementation of the public mental health policy and the institutional political commitment of professionals which have been historically linked to the construction of the Unified Health System and have demonstrated their contribution to different assistance proposals.