Madness in Brazilian documents: the construction of citizenship and the state's conformation

Abstract

This text it´s a mapping of how the madness appears categorized in the Brazilian bureaucratic documents in force of 1978, beginning of the fight for psychiatric reform, until the present time. This mapping is inspired by the anthropological propositions about the creative capacities of documents, the public policies as constituents of the process of state formation and about administration and governance while technologies of government that create specific segments. The objective of this study is to show that the changes in official categories in state documents are linked to the reorientation of mental health care, revealing the interrelationship between demands for citizenship and services. It is part of this objective to emphasize the capacity of the documents to create social realities as from administrative interventions and redefinition of boundaries (individual, domestic, professional, institutional and state).