Maternity and postpartum depression in discourse of mothers and health professionals

• Grant number: 17/11804-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: September 01, 2017
• End date: August 31, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology - Psychological Treatment and Prevention
• Principal Investigator: Marlene Guirado
• Grantee: Juliana Dias Ferreira
• Host Institution: Instituto de Psicologia (IP). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

In the scientific literature about maternity, many authors stand by the idea that the experience of becoming a mother is usually expected to be a moment of joy; but, after giving birth, a lot of women experience what is usually called postpartum depression. Given this theme, the research we propose aims to study maternity and postpartum depression in mothers and health professionals discourses, characterizing how the relationships with the family and the baby, with the social environment and with health professionals carry out effects on the way the woman "sees herself" in this movement of feeling depressed and receiving diagnosis after given birth. In order to achieve this goal and try to find possible understandings of these questions, our research is instrumented in the Institutional Analysis of Discourse (IAD), developed by Guirado. We'll conduct, in a public health institution in São Paulo, interviews with professionals that give this diagnosis and treatment, and we will attend, as an observer, a consultation of these professionals to a mother considered in postpartum depression. If possible, we will also interview this mother. The study of this material, guided by IAD, will be made through an analysis that evidences how meanings and truths are produced on the discourses, giving special attention to the place in which the one that speaks is located. In this process, we'll try to characterize the output of truths and subjectivation modes regarding the maternal experience when it's accompanied by such conditions. (AU)