Therapeutic accompaniment (TA) as a political movement for freedom

Abstract

At the beginning of the 2000s health care began to be offered in the territory, in a psychosocial care network. Mental health services have built new forms of care and look at severe psychic suffering. It was a great advance that reshaped the cultural scene and a long process of deinstitutionalization of practices and discourses in relation to madness. Therapeutic Accompaniment (TA) is a practice that was born along with the reform movements in Mental Health and developed as an expanded clinic that operates outside the institution, seeking to articulate the elements of its daily life as a therapeutic strategy. The objective of this article, therefore, was to reflect on the history of TA practice and its emancipatory and territorial prerogatives in mental health care. The research had an exploratory and descriptive design to achieve its objectives. The study approach was qualitative, based on interviews with a semi-structured script. Data analysis was performed by content analysis. The results showed that the TA practices in Brazil went hand in hand with the principles of the Brazilian Psychiatric Reform and with the Psychosocial Care Mode, constituting a powerful political device for strengthening the rights of users, such as the right to the city and to a dignified life, and place themselves in the mediation of the rescue of citizenship, fueled by the desire for social reintegration.