Abstract
The scope of the study was to identify the structure of social representations regarding health and illness as expressed by representatives of social movements. The study included 66 members of social movements in the Federal District of Brazil. A questionnaire was applied to obtain the socio-economic profile of the participants and the free association technique was used in order to identify the likely peripheral and central core of the social representations analyzed by version 2000 EVOC software (Ensemble de Programmes Permettant l'Analyse des Évocations). The study results indicate that the majority of the participants have been activists for longer than six years, male, young adults, with above high school level education, monthly income over two minimum salaries, and are users of the Brazilian Unified Health System. Concerning the social representations of health structure, it was found that “quality of life” comprised the core system, while in the case of the social representations of illness, the core was found to be “suffering.” The study suggests that the respondents’ social representations of health and illness remain distant from a Social Determinants paradigm considered necessary for the assertion of the right to health and for achieving quality of life.
Key words
Health; Illness; Social representation; Social movements
