Indigenous mental health

a necessary crack in the hegemonic conceptions

Abstract

The data provided by the Brazilian Ministry of Health show that the suicidal rate among the indigenous population reached almost the triple of the national average rate. Considering these numbers, this theoretical paper approaches the mental health subject as a challenge with the indigenous. The objective is to present alternatives health conceptions, finely wrought from cosmology and traditional lifestyle of the indigenous peoples. Departing from bibliographic research, based on indigenous authors connected to other thinkers, we seek to identify concepts and connections with the mental health. Considering the impossibility to generalize this problem, due the inexistence of an unique indigenous image, this paper aspire a plural understanding, considering the multiple intersections among it, mainly the relation of these peoples with their land and their fight for it. On the whole, this field is considered a great challenge for health workers, which often following a strict biomedical perspective become resistant to the singularity of those people. More than selecting solutions to the problem, it’s presented the importance of creating spaces which can promote the debate with community as an ethic behave that consider the singularity of those people.