MENDES LEMOS, Patrícia    CELIO FREIRE, José. The contours of late-modern suffering and mental illness: ethical propositions for the Psychosocial Care Center. Psicol. rev. (Belo Horizonte) []. 2011, 17, 2, pp.303-321. ISSN 1677-1168.

This article seeks to develop a reading of mental suffering and illness based on the late-modern social context. It aims at reflecting on the demands presented by the users of the Center for Psychosocial Care, which characterize the contemporary subject and require a singular ethics from professionals and devices of the Psychiatric Reform, apart from the invention of different forms of institutionalization. Through the development of a conceptual discussion, we take madness as synonymous with alterity, as we understand suffering as consequence of this alienation from others in late-modern life. Taking into account the aspect of alterity as constitutive of our subjectivity, we conclude with the urgent proposition of reviewing current knowledge and practices in the field of Mental Health, which can be accomplished only by creating a new ethics that is rooted in the affection by the suffering of other-crazy-otherness

: Psychological suffering and illness; Psychosocial Care Center; late modernity; ethics; alterity.

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