Brazilian mental health settings in Covid-19 times: a reflection

Abstract

The paper aims to point out and reflect on some effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on Brazilians’ mental health. If, on the one hand, the materiality of the body endangered by an invisible organism has psychically affected all subjects in the world, on the other hand, the subjective experiences facing the virus in Brazil are marked by the unequal distribution of vulnerabilities and the unique condition of elaborating the lived. This work will address mental health in Brazil considering the crossings of the sociocultural and political context in the production of psychological distress and drawing on reflections built from the available bibliographic productions on COVID-19, psychological suffering and from listening to individual and social experiences from the clinical care of Brazilians living in Brazil during the pandemic.