PRESENTATION

It is always a pleasure when yet another issue of Interface is completed and is ready to be shared with our readers. Issue 43, the last one of 2012, provides reflections on important questions relating to people with disabilities, the indigenous population and mental health, among other relevant current topics.

Law No. 10.436/2002 recognizes the Brazilian sign language (LIBRAS) as a linguistic system for the Brazilian deaf community. Two articles are presented: one relating to training and the other to the lines of care for disabled people. The first discusses the presence of LIBRAS in pedagogical policy projects for health-related courses, and the other, the need for communication skills among these professionals in order to ensure comprehensiveness of care and not to place this population's health at risk. Disabled people who are also street-dwellers are presented through individual histories interlinked with social histories, thereby providing visibility to this condition and to these individuals' state of vulnerability.

With regard to the health of indigenous populations, the Tenharim people and the issue of alcoholism are presented from an anthropological viewpoint, throwing light on the problem raised by the indigenous community.

The line of demedicalization is discussed in two articles. These deal respectively with attention deficit disorder and hyperactivity and the trivialization of use of antidepressants and anxiolytics for treating women with depressive disorders. In the Theses section, the same theme is emphasized in the abstract of the study "The medicalization of social issues: a study on the prescription of psychopharmaceuticals within the public healthcare system", which shows that there is a possibility of placing the population's own autonomy at risk through promoting its dependence on drugs distributed by the healthcare services.

Within the field of mental health, several issues are discussed, such as the reception process, the body image of obese subjects, anthropological issues and distance education. The Creation section gifts us with a reading of a poem written starting from the life history of a psychotherapy patient with bipolar affective disorder, which describes the experience of bipolarity, in its depressive and euphoric phases.

In the article "Men: victims and perpetrators of violence", men's health is analyzed using the hermeneutic-dialectic method, in the light of Hannah Arendt's political theory, with violence interpreted as the domination that permeates human relations.

Using theatrical language, workshops on dengue are described as an activity of dialogue, for collective analysis of situations connected with public health problems.

This 2012' last issue also includes a photographic project based on Simmel, Flusser and Baudrillard.

It can thus be seen that Interface 43 is delivered to the public addressing different current topics and is aligned with advances in public health and education policies. It provides reflection on and strengthening of the lines of care for different populations, and brings together different fields of knowledge. Our readers are invited to reflect on the diversity of these themes and the depth of the debates presented.

Vera Lúcia Garcia

Assistant Editor

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  30 Jan 2013
• Date of issue
  Dec 2012