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Manifesto of the Forum on the Medicalization of Education and Society
Brazilian society is living through a growing medicalization process at all levels of life.
Medicalization is understood as the process that artificially turns non-medical issues into medical problems. Different types of problems are presented as “diseases”, “disorders”, or “disturbances,” concealing the larger political, social, cultural, and emotional issues that affect people's lives. Collective issues are taken as individual; and social and political problems are turned into biological ones. In this process, which generates psychic suffering, the individual and his/her family are held responsible for the problems, while governments, authorities, and professionals are exempted from their responsibilities.
Once classified as "sick", people become “patients" and, consequently, “consumers” of treatments, therapies, and medications, which change their own bodies into the problems that, in the logic of medicalization, shall be solved individually. Many times, families, professionals, authorities, politicians, and policy makers are exempted from their responsibilities regarding social issues: so that individual people are the ones who have "problems", who are "dysfunctional", who "do not adjust", who are "sick", and who are even, judicilialized.
Learning and ways of being and acting – areas of great complexity and diversity– have been the preferred medicalization targets. It must be highlighted that, historically, it is from dissatisfaction and questioning that the possibility of change is built into the forms of the social order, to overcome prejudice and inequality.
The speech of inclusion, causes a stigma and a secondary exclusion to those already socially, emotionally, and educationally excluded. In this way, medicalization has been fulfilling the role of controlling and subjugating people, repressing questioning and discomfort; it fulfills an even more perverse role of hiding physical and psychological violence, turning people into "hosts of behavior and learning disorders”.
In Brazil, the critique and confronting of medicalization processes is still in the early stages.
It is in this context that the Forum on the Medicalization of Education and Society was created, whose purposes are to–align those entities, groups, and people in whose interest it is to confront and overcome the medicalization problem, and to mobilize society to critique the medicalization of learning and behavior.
The Forum has a political and permanent character, as articulated by its participants, and decisions will be preferably made by consensus. The Forum is comprised of entities, movements, and people who have an interest in the subject and are in general agreement with the its goals.
The Forum is based on the following principles:
Against the medicalization processes in life.
Defense of victims of the medicalization process.
Defense of human rights.
Defense of the Child and Adolescent Statute.
Right to free public education, which is democratic, secular, of high quality, and socially relevant to everyone.
Right to health and defense of the Sistema Único de Saúde – SUS and its principles.
Respect for diversity and particularity, especially in the learning processes.
Valuing a multidisciplinary approach to understanding the phenomeonon of medicalization.
Valuing popular participation.
The Education and Society Medicalization Forum proposes the following challenges:
I. Enlarge the democratization of the debate
- Establish mechanisms for interacting with civil society
i. Popularize the debate, without sacrificing scientific integrity.
ii. Multiply the means of communication, including literature, sites and arts in general.
iii. Build strategies to obtain media space.
- Establish mechanisms for interacting with the academy
i. Increase discussion among professionals from several areas;
ii. Build strategies to obtain space in the initial and continuing education courses of professionals from several areas.
iii. Support curricular proposals for the humanization of education and health practices.
- Socialize the understanding of medicalization and its consequences
i. Recognize the needs of families who experience medicalization processes.
ii. Clarify drug addiction risks – illegal and legal drugs - as a consequence of medicalization.
- Increase comprehension of the diversity and historicity of human learning and developmental processes.
II. Build strategies which subvert the medicalization logic
- Enlarge the theoretical production in the field of the critique of medicalization.
- Intervene in the formulation of public policies, providing the bases for new conceptions of the human being and society.
- Support hosting initiatives and the strengthening of families, demystifying the pretense of benefits of medicalization.
- Support inter-sector actions which confront medicalization.
São Paulo, November 13th, 2010
Entidades que assinam o Manifesto até o momento:
Conselho Regional de Psicologia de São Paulo – CRP-06
Grupo Interinstitucional Queixa Escolar - GIQE
Associação Brasileira de Psicologia Escolar e Educacional - ABRAPEE
Conselho Estadual de Defesa da Criança e do Adolescente de São Paulo - CONDECA
Departamento de Pediatria - Faculdade Ciências Médicas da Universidade Estadual de Campinas – UNICAMP
Faculdade São Bento da Bahia – Curso de Psicologia
Faculdade Social da Bahia – Curso de Psicologia
Fórum de Saúde Mental do Butantã
Anhanguera Educacional
Sindicato dos Psicólogos do Estado de São Paulo - SINPSI
Conselho Regional de Psicologia do Rio de Janeiro – CRP 05
Sindicato dos Profissionais em Educação no Ensino Municipal de São Paulo -SINPEEM
Mandato do Vereador Eliseu Gabriel
Mandato do Vereador Claudio Fonseca
Mandato do Deputado Estadual Carlos Giannazi
Colégio Universitas - Ensino Médio – Santos, SP
Universidade Estadual de Maringá – UEM - Departamento de Psicologia
Fundação Criança de São Bernardo do Campo
Universidade Comunitária do Oeste Catarinense – UNOCHAPECÓ – Curso de Psicologia
Associação de Docentes da Universidade de São Paulo - ADUSP
Associação Nacional de Pesquisa em Pós-Graduação – ANPED – GT Psicologia da Educação
Instituto Sedes Sapientiae
Associação Palavra Criativa
Universidade de São Paulo - Laboratório Interinstitucional de Estudos e Pesquisas em Psicologia Escolar e Educacional - LIEPPE
Centro de Saúde Escola “Samuel Barnsley Pessoa” (Butantã) Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de São Paulo - FMUSP
Grupo de Defesa dos Direitos da Criança e do Adolescente – DEDICA – Curitiba, PR
União de Mulheres do Município de São Paulo
Fórum Paulista de Educação Infantil
CNTE - Confederação Nacional dos Trabalhadores em Educação
CFP - Conselho Federal de Psicologia
Centro Acadêmico Iara Iavelberg - Psicologia USP
Departamento de Psicologia da UNICENTRO (Universidade Estadual do Centro-Oeste - Irati/PR)
Faculdade de Educação da Universidade de São Paulo
Faculdade de Educação da UNICAMP
"Projeto espaço Palavra" da Clinica Psicológica Ana Maria Poppovic - PUC-SP
LEPEDE'ES - Laboratório de Pesquisas em Educação - Educação Especial UFSCAR
Rede Butantã de entidades e forças sociais
CENTRO DO PROFESSORADO PAULISTA
Faculdade de Educação da Universidade Federal da Bahia
Rede Humaniza SUS - Coletivo de Editores
Representação Paulista da Associação Brasileira de Psicologia Escolar e Educacional
SINDICATO DOS NUTRICIONISTAS DO ESTADO DE SÃO PAULO - SINESP
Federação Nacional dos Farmaceuticos
Coordenação de Políticas sobre Drogas do Estado de São Paulo
Regional Rio de Janeiro da Abrapso
Serviço de Atenção às Dificuldades de Aprendizagem da Secretaria Municipal de Saúde de Campinas
Programa de Pós-Graduação em Psicologia da Universidade Federal Fluminense
Federação de Montanhismo do Estado de São Paulo
Associação Brasileira de Ensino de Psicologia - ABEP
Associação Brasileira de Psicologia da Saúde
Centro Excursionista Universitário - CEU
Departamento de Fonoaudiologia da Unicentro - Campus Irati
Núcleo Especializado de Atendimento a Criança Escolar - NEACE
Assinaram o Manifesto 450 participantes do I Seminário Educação Medicalizada: Dislexia, TDAH e outros supostos transtornos.
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