Autolesão na Adolescência

Reflexões Sócio-históricas para o seu Enfrentamento

Abstract

Self-harm among adolescents is a type of self-inflicted violence that has raised concerns among health professionals, educators and researchers from the most different areas of knowledge due to the visibility achieved in recent times and the supposed increase in the number of cases. Often, trying to explain what would lead a teenager to self-harm, such an act is naturalized, explained based on the subject's private experiences or attributed to the prior existence of a mental disorder. In this sense, the subject and/or their family are blamed, shifting the analysis of the historical and social reality in which self-injury manifests itself. This theoretical essay aims to reflect on non-suicidal self-injury in its interface with gender issues, finding strange, among other things, the explanation that this is an eminently feminine practice. Using the contributions of Socio-Historical Psychology and gender studies with a Marxist orientation, we conclude that we need to consider the complexity and multidetermination of the practice of self-harm, in addition to seeking the reasons that underlie it, problematizing the extent to which the naturalization of both adolescence and of self-harm serve to reinforce stereotypes and hide inequalities, oppression and violence committed against girls and women. We conclude by advocating that both formal and informal educational spaces, from an emancipatory perspective, must combat inequalities, aiming for fuller human development and the formation of subjects ethically committed to another project of sociability.