“Evitar que queden a la deriva”: desafíos de la práctica profesional en el sistema de salud mental argentino para niños/as y adolescentes

Abstract

This ethnographic article addresses the difficulties, practices, and strategies of the professionals of the only Argentine hospital fully specialized in the treatment of mental health problems of children and adolescents. More specifically, it analyses the challenges that arise at the time of referring a patient while ensuring the continuity of treatment, considering the high centralization of resources in this institution and their scarcity in the rest of the health system. In this context, the strategies and practices of the professionals allow us to study the ways in which certain problems of the child and adolescent population are managed by the state. State management is conditioned by processes of social stigmatization, obstacles to achieve access to treatment, and tensions regarding the ethics of the responsible state agents.