Luta antimanicomial em Manaus: memória e resistência por cidadania cultural (1975-2025)

Abstract

This research sought to investigate the meanings of anti-asylum struggle in Manaus between 1975 and 2025 in a dimension of struggle and resistance experienced by subjects engaged in the field of health, seeking to revalue the memories and oralities of these subjects, relating them to the issue of dignity, as active participants of the historical construction. It was also in the interest of the research to identify processes of production of rights from work experiences, collectivities and multiple languages. The research was mainly guided by the perspective of Oral History, seeking to broaden analysis and problematizations from diverse sets of documents. From different narratives, it is possible to perceive not a panorama of what was the anti-asylum struggle in Manaus, but to think how various experiences compose an important framework of transformations in the state of Amazonas. Important movements around dignity and citizenship to people in mental distress so that they are no longer violated by the psychiatric logic within the hospice. And outside the asylum, the network of psychosocial care could carry out the work of a collective project of society, through the psychiatric reform that was happening throughout Brazil. Such movements did not happen the same as what was done in cities of São Paulo and Minas Gerais, for example. The subjects in this research demonstrate this from their understanding and knowledge built with those with whom they could discern ways to achieve the changes for which they were fighting.