A docilização dos corpos femininos e o direito fundamental à digna existência: uma análise foucaultiana da medicalização da saúde mental das mulheres na contemporaneidade

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes the process of medicalization of women's mental health in contemporary Brazil and its implications for the domestication of female bodies. The research begins with the observation that the advance in drug prescriptions has not been accompanied, to the same extent, by the expansion of non-drug therapeutic practices, revealing a worrying scenario of pathologization of everyday life, especially for women. Based on Foucault's perspective on power, discourse, and domestication, the work investigates how medicalization acts as a mechanism of social control, reinforcing patriarchal structures and undermining women's autonomy by standardizing their behaviors and emotions. Articulating fundamental personality rights, human dignity, and feminist critique, it demonstrates that the psychiatrization of female psychological suffering contributes to the maintenance of gender inequality, often under the guise of care. Using the methodology of historical-dialectical materialism, the study explores the historical construction of madness and the mechanisms of exclusion, revisiting authors such as Foucault and Vygotsky, as well as feminist thinkers such as Silvia Federici, Débora Diniz, Ivone Gebara, and Nise da Silveira. Finally, it proposes a reflection on the need for comprehensive and emancipatory therapeutic practices that respect female subjectivity and break with the hierarchical logic of medicalization, in defense of truly democratic, ethical, and humane mental health care.