A (des)institucionalização da loucura no Rio Grande do Sul: fontes em Zero Hora

Abstract

This study analyzes the coverage in the newspaper Zero Hora (state of Rio Grande do Sul) regarding the deinstitutionalization of insanity, also referred to as psychiatric reform at the Hospital Psiquiátrico São Pedro (São Pedro Psychiatric Hospital). The analyzed texts date from 1992, period of the approval of the Anti-asylum Law which proposed a reform of assistance to psychiatric patients. The study works from the assumption that mental illness, besides being a psychic phenomenon, is also a cultural and discursive problem. For this reason, the concept of insanity was conceived and has been modified over time, acquiring new meaning with the approval of the psychiatric reform law, whose meaning is itself constructed through journalistic discourse. The aim is to analyze a corpus of 33 journalistic texts in order to determine the sources that speak about mental illness and to identify the discourse on the topic: which sources are legitimated and recognized at the expense of others that are silenced. This study is important because the sources are part of the process of news production and are linked to criteria of newsworthiness. Zero Hora is studied because it is an example of large media, interconnects different social fields and (re)presents a discourse that constructs meanings about reality and therefore about insanity.