Duas escolas e muitas histórias: produzindo saúde mental com adolescentes no contexto escolar

Abstract

Research with adolescents rather than about them remains incipient, particularly in Brazil and in the field of mental health. Recent literature points to an increase in indicators of psychological distress among this population, a trend that intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic. Such data highlights the need for public policies aimed at the promotion of mental health and strategic care for adolescents that move beyond individualizing and diagnostic approaches, incorporating the active participation of these subjects in processes of reflection, planning, and implementation. This perspective is supported by the Brazilian Child and Adolescent Statute and by national Psychosocial Care policies, which recognize adolescents as subjects of rights and holders of legitimate spaces of voice. In this context, schools emerge as a powerful territory for mental health promotion actions; however, the literature indicates that such actions are often predetermined and minimally participatory. Considering this, the present study aimed to produce knowledge on mental health with adolescents from public schools, as well as to plan, implement, and evaluate mental health promotion actions in the school context together with them. This is a participatory research study conducted in two full-time public schools, involving 43 adolescents organized into three Working Groups. Although singular, the processes shared common phases: initiating, encountering, problematizing, deepening and analyzing, planning, implementing, and sharing. The research was mediated by occupational therapy devices, human activities, conviviality, and creative methodologies. Three participatory processes resulted from these trajectories: (1) the work with Adolescent Welcomers at “Escola MCD”; (2) the Sharing Care Group, with high school students from “Escola Mais Bonita da Baixada”; and (3) the Welcoming Circle, with middle school girls from the same school. Within the specificity of each process, adolescents identified the school as a place permeated by demands for performance, discipline, and pressure generating discomfort, stress, and anxiety, but also as a place of meaningful bonds, opportunities for conviviality, play, and care. In dialogue with the literature, the discussion of results highlights welcoming practices, playful and artistic-cultural activities, informal spaces, and the very construction of the Working Groups as important elements in the production of mental health in schools. Furthermore, the study indicates that being with adolescents requires availability, time, conviviality, and openness to the construction of participation, challenging punctual and standardized interventions. The contribution of occupational therapy is also emphasized in facilitating participatory processes by operating through everyday life, human activities, and the construction of bonds. Despite limitations related to the number of schools involved and the fact that access to participants began through leadership figures, the research contributes by affirming mental health promotion as a collective, situated, and relational process that recognizes adolescents’ participation and the school as a territory of care and life production.