Sentidos produzidos por idosos institucionalizados acerca de perdas e lutos : vivências marcadas por resistências e (re)existências.

Abstract

In recent decades, there have been important changes in the population profile that have led to a rapid increase in the long-lived population, leaving public health on alert regarding the care of elderly people. In this context, this study aims to map the experiences of institutionalized elderly people in relation to losses and describe policies for coping with grief, reflecting on the rationality of governmentality involved in promoting the health of elderly people. Thus, based on the premise that the feelings involved in the elaboration of mourning in the elderly, depending on the circumstances, can result in illness, demanding implementation of public health policies aimed at contributing to the elaboration of healthy mourning, this work structures the theme of aging in the elderly. as follows: Chapter E-book - MENTAL HEALTH AND AGING IN TIMES OF COVID-19. The objective was to discuss the mental health of the elderly in the Covid-19 scenario, taking as a starting point the biological, psychological, and social factors of aging, the context of the Covid-19 pandemic and its implications for the mental health of the elderly. The results indicate that the pandemic affects the health of elderly people in a way that reduces their quality of life and well-being. Therefore, reflecting on its impacts on the mental health of the elderly is pertinent and relevant to sharpen the concerns of the scientific community, despite the damage caused by Covid-19 to the long lived population. Article I – IMPACTS OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC ON THE MENTAL HEALTH OF ELDERLY PEOPLE: from a health promotion perspective. The objective of this study was to discuss the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on the mental health of older adults, according to the principles of health promotion. The results suggest that the traumatic crises faced by the elderly during the pandemic culminate in psychiatric and psychological disorders such as anxiety and depression, further weakening and intensifying the suffering of this population group. Thus, the psychological impacts of the pandemic on the mental health of the elderly require an interdisciplinary approach that is tailored to their subjectivities and is therefore an emblematic issue from the point of view of health promotion. Article II – PSYCHOLOGICAL IMPACTS OF THE PANDEMIC: challenges for health education in action. The objective of this article was to discuss the relationship between the psychological impacts of Covid-19 and the emerging challenges of health education in the pandemic scenario. The results showed that the pandemic produced several psychological impacts, such as loneliness, social isolation, anxiety, post-traumatic stress, depression, among others. Furthermore, in the long term, other factors may be identified and elucidated as discussions and discoveries about the problems left by the pandemic advance. Article III - PRODUCTIONS OF VULNERABILITIES IN THE PANDEMIC AND NECROPOLITICS SCENARIO: interconnections and reflections. The objective of this article was to discuss the production of vulnerabilities in the scenario of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the possible relationships with necropolitics instrumentalized by governmentality. The results show that, in the pandemic scenario, the production of vulnerabilities is caused by the biopsychosocial impacts caused by the coronavirus, however, coping policies such as social isolation imposed as a restrictive measure against contagion have spread their effects. It is concluded that the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic surround the most vulnerable groups, not only due to the symptomatic effects caused by the virus, but also due to the machinic arrangements of neoliberalism and its entire rhizomatic web that produces vulnerabilities. Thus, although challenges arise, attention is drawn to the importance of involving the population in the construction of public policies with a view to monitoring the processes and preventing necropolitics instrumentalized by governmentality from becoming a trend. Article IV – LOSSES AND DAMAGES DURING AGING: death of life or life of deaths? The objective of this study was to discuss losses and damages in aging. The aim is to articulate death and dying with the intersubjectivations involved in the elaboration of mourning in senescence, with a focus on promoting the health of the elderly. The results indicate that in addition to biopsychosocial factors, losses and damages for elderly people are crossed by concepts of finitude and death that are culturally intertwined with aging, which can complicate the process of mourning in elderly people and their well-being. These are speeches that are repeated reaffirming to the elderly the culture of the fragile, unproductive, and symbolically representative body of the final phase of life. Thus, considering the conceptions of death in the West and the implications to produce aging is, first, an invitation to think about “getting old” in the West as the death of life, and “being old” in the West as a life of deaths, thus signaling the need for changes in cultural attitudes. Along this path, discussing the conceptions of death in the West, articulating the subjectivities of older adults, is fundamental to understanding the subjectivities of death and the implications of mourning for the health and well-being of the elderly. Article V – AGING, WORKFORCE AND IMPLIED SUBJECTIVES: essay on care policies for seniors. The objective of this article is to discuss public policies for elderly care, and to this end, the theme of inclusion in the workforce of elderly people is articulated, and the possible developments for the well-being of elderly people. The results point to an environment in which the work forces of the elderly take place in a space that naturalizes the inactivity of the elderly. In this context, an extensive interpretation of the dimension of the micropolitical subjectivities of aging is necessary to understand the dynamics into which the elderly were pushed in the primary exercise of their citizenship. Therefore, although advances are recognized, care policies for gerontes emerge slowly, and constitute an emblematic issue from a phenomenal, procedural, and structural point of view. Therefore, it is necessary to undertake paradigmatic changes, with actions and attitudes involving the process of gerontological policies. To this end, when developing public policies, the elderly person's voice must be respected regarding the specific demands of aging. Manuscript I – AGING, HEALTH PROMOTION AND PUBLIC POLICIES: plots, resistances and (re)existences in motion. The objective of this article was to reflect on health policies for the elderly, the subjectivities of aging and the resistances and (re)existences involved in the process, with a focus on health promotion. The results point to the development of health policies for the elderly configured in a scenario managed by exclusionary crossings, in which biopolitics operates by serving the established sovereign power, making itself perceived through statements that emerge from the discursive practices, norms and social standards of the person's culture. old. With programs and strategies of actions aimed at health that do not comply with the principles of democracy, as they discard the subject in an aging condition. Thus, elderly care policies still face many challenges before promoting elderly health in the full sense of the concept. Manuscript II – SUBJECTIVATIONS OF LOSSES IN OLD AGE: coexisting territorial tensions. This article is an extension of a doctoral thesis and aims to address the subjectivities of institutionalized elderly people about losses. To this end, we discuss the historical-cultural and socioeconomic dimensions involved in the subjectivities of old age, reflecting on the territorial tensions coexisting in the process of subjectivity of gerontes. This is an exploratory and descriptive research, with a cartographic approach. The results indicate that the subjectivities of the losses of these elderly people are influenced by the cultural, economic, and social dimensions that permeate the invention of old age, implicated by governmental reasons that naturalize losses in senescence. It turns out that, for institutionalized elderly people, such movements occur in different contexts regarding the physical territory of coexisting tensions and the living territory of the search for meaning. Thus, institutionalized elderly people are gradually displaced into a state of social death. Manuscript III – MEANINGS PRODUCED BY INSTITUTIONALIZED ELDERLY PEOPLE ABOUT LOSS AND GRIEF: experiences marked by resistance and (re)existence. The objective of this article is to map the institutionalized elderly person's experiences of loss, and to analyze the modes of subjectivation produced in the elderly person's experience of death and dying. This is cartographic research, carried out with 13 elderly people under the care of a long-term care institution for the elderly. The results indicate that the elderly face the loss of a young body, lost dreams and interrupted professional careers, and not just due to the death of loved ones. Furthermore, for institutionalized elderly people, mourning is also composed of not living with family, the absence of mourning rituals, among other losses that produce modes of subjectivation marked by social death. Final considerations: In this sense, the subjectivities of losses for the institutionalized elderly are crossed by exclusionary, biologizing and disciplinary power relations, which, reasoned by neoliberalism, individualize the elderly person to separate them from the productive, young, and healthy social group. However, we captured movements of resistance in which the elderly produce political, ethical and aesthetic subjectivities in an attempt to care for themselves, which, supported by the policies implemented by the partner institution, break paradigms and promote other encounters that result in re(existences) and new becomings, giving new meaning to their experiences based on the forces of existence that enable potential lives marked by the desire to live.