Institutionalized spirituality: public policies, clinical uses and medical research in the legitimation of spirituality as a health issue in Brazil

• Grant number: 18/05193-5
• Support Opportunities: Research Grants - Young Investigators Grants
• Duration: January 01, 2019 - December 31, 2022
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology - Theory of Anthropology
• Principal Investigator: Rodrigo Ferreira Toniol
• Grantee: Rodrigo Ferreira Toniol
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Associated researchers: Carlos Alberto Steil ; Greta dos Santos Garcia ; Isabel Cristina de Moura Carvalho ; Isabela Mayumi Hirata da Silva ; Luciana Cavalcanti Alvarez ; Luiá Bolonha Nunes ; Maria Luiza Ghizi Assad
• Associated scholarship(s): 20/03914-7 - A good time? Differences in the production of experiences of pregnancy, childbirth and the puerperium, BP.DD; 19/27041-5 - Health and spirituality learning and changes in the conception of person in the medical courses of the universities of Brazil, BP.MS; 19/13634-4 - From alternative to official: complementary therapies and traditional Medicine in the Brazilian public health system, BP.IC; + associated scholarships 19/12982-9 - The good faith: the presence of spirituality in Brazilian's publishing market, BP.IC; 19/12643-0 - Matter of science: scientific controversies in the health field, BP.IC; 18/25199-8 - Diagnosis, treatment and cure of panic disorder in a spirituality outpatient clinic, BP.MS; 18/25198-1 - Classificatory policies: spirituality as diagnosis, BP.MS; 18/25195-2 - Spirituality in public health policies, BP.IC; 18/25197-5 - Emergence and consolidation of the medical literature dedicated to the subject of spirituality in Brazil, BP.IC; 18/24006-1 - Institutionalized spirituality: public policies, clinical uses and medical research in the legitimation of spirituality as a health issue in Brazil, BP.JP; 18/25196-9 - Spiritual anamnesis as a clinical protocol, BP.IC - associated scholarships

Abstract

The fundamental issue of this research project is the increasing forms of legitimation of the spirituality on the official health field. Precisely, it is a question of investigating the way in which this category has been incorporated by secular institutions and, with that, it has been routinized in official contexts of attention to health. To do so, our focus of empirical interest will be addressed to three dimensions of the official field of health care: clinic, scientific medical research and public health policies. In the clinic, the research field will be the Hospital das Clínicas, where since 2018 onwards the Ambulatory of Spirituality will be in operation. Regarding health policies, the focus will be on the policies of the Ministry of Health that, at least since 2003, have systematically made reference and established guidelines for care with the "spiritual dimension of health". Regarding medical research, we will focus on the Center for Research in Spirituality and Health, Federal University of Juiz de Fora, and the Health, Spirituality and Religious Program of the University of São Paulo. Both are registered with CNPq and are part of a broad network of research groups established in medical schools that describe, among their main objectives, research on the impact of spirituality on health. This research, therefore, has as main objective to analyze the way in which spirituality has been established and legitimized as a health dimension from the use of this category in public policies, clinical routines of care and as an object of privileged investigation in groups of medical research. From this empirical context and from the dialogue with the literature of the social sciences of religion, this project gives centrality to the debate about the very category of spirituality that, although it is recurrently triggered by sociologists and anthropologists, has not been thematized directly in Brazil. (AU)