Objective: to analyze the concepts and perceptions that adolescents and their caregivers have
on mental health and health services in their ecological context and investigate the barriers to
access to mental health care experiences. Method: it is an exploratory and analytical study
with a convenience sample obtained from October 2009 to June 2010 with 100 adolescents
and 100 caregivers in the city of Belem, Brazil, in two public clinical settings, a mental health
specialized one and other general, and two school contexts, one public and one private. It was
used structured questionnaires to investigate different dimensions involved in health issues,
family welfare and living conditions, followed by statistical analysis with technical analysis
of variance and correlation. Results: the average age of adolescents was 14.47 (SD 1.90)
years, 58% female, the kind of mental health problem reported by the majority were in trouble
at school (21.9%), the most frequently professional sought was a psychologist (59.4%).
Regarding the concepts of mental health, adolescents and their caregivers gave importance to
the behavior of abstaining themselves from drugs; as the conceptions of mental illness, both
conceived as something to be seriously considered, both agreed that religion contributes to
health/ mental disease and revealed the primacy of the mother in search of help; regarding the
coping strategies adolescents similarly dealt with mental health problems in their lives,
adolescents and caregivers had a stigmatized vision of health professionals and fear
discrimination primarily by peers; regarding the treatment both showed real or imagined
conception in favor of therapies as a source of help and privileged position to express their
own opinion and in any case, the mother turned out to be the main person who contribute to
the search specialized help. The variables that showed the merits of different conceptions of
mental health / illness and the strategies employed in maintaining the mental health of the
family showed differences between the contexts investigated, with respect to self-concept, the
private school students showed higher self-congruence between the real and ideal self
compared to other contexts; caregivers showed higher self-congruence in public school. As
for the prospects that adolescents have about the family real identifications revealed more
frequent in the four contexts with the mother, followed by the grandmother/grandfather; as the
model family identification in clinical settings and private schools is higher with the mother,
in public school is higher with the father; was observed discrepancy from the perspective of
the caregiver about the self concept of the teenager. For most adolescents and caregivers
health conditions were rated "good" to "excellent." Self-assessment of well-being of
adolescents in the overall sample showed that most of them felt very satisfied, totally full of
energy, enjoying themselves and had a good relationship with the teachers; in the view of
caregivers, most their teens felt very satisfied with life, used his free time hanging out with
friends and gave more importance to feelings of well-being in relation to physical
performance. Conclusions: are highlighted similarities and differences between adolescents
and caregivers in school and clinical samples that can support preventive health actions in
context to the city of Belem.
|
