The Psychosocial Care Network as a Living Dispositif: Care, Affects, and Permanent Education in Mental Health

Abstract

This article analyzes mental health work within the Psychosocial Care Network (RAPS) by articulating contributions from Psychology, Collective Health, and Education. Grounded in schizoanalysis and the cartographic method, the study is based on a qualitative research project approved by an institutional ethics committee and conducted in 2023, which followed the care trajectories of education professionals experiencing psychological distress within primary health care. The analysis was developed through cartographic scenes, understood as analyzers of care, training, and subjectivation processes in everyday health services. The findings indicate that the RAPS is constituted as a living dispositif, traversed by tensions between medicalizing practices and experiences of expanded care, shared responsibility, and network-based work. Affects emerge as central elements in the analysis of health work, operating both as mechanisms of capture and as potentials for inventing care in freedom. Furthermore, permanent health education stands out as an inseparable dimension of mental health care, produced within work processes through the problematization of practices and institutional encounters. It is concluded that the implementation of Brazilian mental health policy depends on sustaining micropolitical processes of care, education, and network articulation within the Unified Health System.