Contribuições da psicologia histórico-cultural para o processo grupal com usuários com esquizofrenia nos Centros de Atenção Psicossocial ; Cultural-historical psychology contributions to the group process with users with schizophenia in Psychosocial Care Centers

The intent of this research was to investigate and systematize theoretical-practical contributions capable of adding up to a greater range of group activities at Psychosocial Care Centers – known in Brazil as CAPS - particularly to assist, along people with schizophrenia, the reorganization of personality through new mediations for reconstitution of the psychological system. This is a theoretical-conceptual study that evokes categories from historical-cultural psychology, collective health, historical-dialectical materialism and the group process theory according to the Latin American social psychology. By considering that the set of care actions in a mental health service needs to be aimed at socialization, without giving up therapeutic purposes, of psychosocial rehabilitation, it is understood that it is necessary to think about the group process in the light of the cultural-historical theory, evoking Leontiev's Activity Theory and the relation between the structure of activity and the development of the psyche. The starting point was the need to reflect on the possible mediations that a group activity could intentionally dynamize, focusing on the reorganization of consciousness and the entire psychological system. For this, it is necessary to take into account the particularities of each person with schizophrenia’s system disintegration and how this person has reacted, according to the singular and general conditions of the development of consciousness that takes place in historically configured social relationships. As a result of the theoretical-conceptual research, illustrations and practical recommendations were synthesized for the development of the main types of workshops recommended for the CAPS (therapeutic with manual and expressive, income generation and literacy/pedagogical activities). Two sections were organized: one which has more general contributions that these references add up to group practices in mental health; and another that has contributions of greater specificity for carrying out with ...