This work investigated, in a working class sample (30 men and 30 women, from 15 to 65 years), the structural organization of the social representation of the concept of "nervous disease", and how gender is associated to such structural organization. A free association task was applied on all participants as a tool to get access to the semantic field of the representations and a total of 272 responses was attained, composed of 86 kinds of semantic expressions that, when grouped according to similarity of meaning, originated 22 analytical categories. The analysis of the meanings of the "disease of the nerves" demonstrated that the roles culturally attributed to men and women generate differences in the expression of the disturbances: while for women they are more expressed in the body, for men they are more expressed in the behaviour.
mental diseases; diseases of the nerves; social representations; facet theory
