MENTAL HEALTH NEEDS OF TRADITIONAL RURAL COMMUNITIES

Abstract

The aim was to find out about the mental health needs of indigenous and rural quilombola communities in Brazil. This is a mixed survey that used the SRQ-14, a sociodemographic questionnaire and a semi-structured interview script. The percentage of CMD found was 33.7%, especially among women (43.6%) and in indigenous communities (37.6%). Among the main factors associated with suffering were precarious living and working conditions in the countryside, gender patterns, family relationships, difficulty in accessing health teams and equipment, and psychosocial stressors. The community emerges simultaneously as a source of primary support and, contradictorily, as a place of invisibility/individualization of mental suffering. As for the care offered, there is little adaptation and sensitivity to the territorial and cultural specificities of the communities, giving evidence of institutional racism ingrained in professional practices and in the ways in which health services are organized.