The madness of isolation: the ways of prevention and the impacts of COVID-19 at a psychiatric hospital

• Grant number: 21/08087-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: April 01, 2022
• End date: December 31, 2022
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Sociology - Other specific Sociologies
• Principal Investigator: Jacqueline Sinhoretto
• Grantee: Otávio Ravagnani Franco de Almeida
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The aim of this research is to analyze the impacts caused by COVID-19 on the routine, lives, and relationships of the segregated, residents and inmates, from a psychiatric hospital, due to the fact that social isolation is being aggravated during the pandemic, which compromises not only their contact with the outside world but also their relationship and lifestyle inside the institution. Based on the concepts of transformation of the Self and stigmatization by Goffman (1974; 2008) as well as Foucault's disciplinary society (1999), the project hypothesis considers that with the social isolation increase and the transformations in hospital activities and routines, there is also an intensification of the institutionalization traits, production of subjectivity and ways of symbolic violence and also the transformation on disciplinary processes, which may come to incorporate safety measures against the disease. Therefore, observational research and semi-structured interviews in loco with institutional actors are going to be performed, together with the inmates and members of the multidisciplinary staff working at the hospital, in order to apprehend also the changes that had occurred from different perspectives, in addition to understanding the meanings attributed to relationships, routines, people and life itself in a total institution. Thus, a documentary analysis of documents from the institution is going to be carried out, such as registers, medical records, and secondary data, including databases and newspapers, in order to establish a comparison with the pandemic context and the transformations recorded by the institution in its legitimized documents.(AU)