Razão e Fé: estudo do grupo de oração como prática complementar na promoção à saúde

The World Health Organization (WHO) has given special attention to therapeutic procedures other than those practiced in conventional therapy, including homeopathy, phytotherapy, spiritual therapies and prayers, making possible the transition from a mere medicalizating model to a holistic view of the human being. This trend, earmarked in 1978 at the Alma-Ata Conference, questions the ability of technological and specialized medicine to solve the health problems of humankind. In Brazil, the onset of the Brazilian unified health system in 1988, introduced changes in the population s health care model where, within the scope of basic care, emphasis has been given to the Family Health Program since 1994. In this scenery, there is a broad area of complementary practices used in promoting health and preventing and treating diseases to support an understanding of the habits and beliefs underpinning popular practices. The purpose of this study was to analyze the perception users participating in the Peace and Balance group of the Family Health Unit of Nova Cidade, in Natal, Rio Grande do Norte, started in 1999, have of the relationship between the experience of prayer and the changes that may have taken place in their lives after joining the group. It is a case study of descriptive nature and qualitative approach. The data were collected during focus group interviews between January and February 2007, using as tools a questionnaire to describe the research participants and a discussion outline. The theoretical support approached the following: religion and the evolution of thought; complementary health practices; and religion as a complementary health practice. Those interviewed reported, as results of such experience, a reduction in stress and depression, an increase in socialization and self-esteem, improved family interaction, comfort, safety, assurance, improved blood pressure levels and a decrease in the use of antihypertension medication and psychopharmacs. Although most professionals do not consider attention to the religious and spiritual aspects an effective therapeutical complement in health care, its understanding and practice may democratize knowledge and relationships, out of which they can learn how to make health production more effective, strengthening assurance and confidence, and developing and expanding soft technologies aimed at health care promotion and wholeness

O jogo das identidades como fator de mobilização político-eleitoral nas campanhas de Dilma Rousseff e Rosalba Ciarlini em 2010

Starting from the premise that we live in the society of spectacle, as proclaimed by Guy Debbord, and, in this context, the media feeds itself off of this spectacularization and constructs a culture of images and production of goods, providing templates from which the subject can identify himself/herself as being male or female, successful or unsuccessful, powerful or powerless. In other words, the culture conveyed by the media produces material for the creation of identities through which individuals insert and recognize themselves in contemporary society. Observing the election campaigns, we can see clearly that this profusion of identities is fairly explored in the advertising propaganda used by the candidates, particularly in the propaganda broadcasted on the Free Electoral Time on TV. Instigated by the explicit relation between the media and politics within the society of the spectacle, this study aims to investigate the main identities that emerge in the discursive practices of the media in the election campaigns of 2010 for president of the Republic and governor of the State of Rio Grande do Norte that had as protagonists the candidates at that moment Dilma Rousseff (PT) for president and Rosalba Ciarline (DEM) for governor. To do so, we based ourselves on the theory of Bakhtin Circle, which considers the statement as a unit of verbal communication and conceives language as a dialogical phenomena and a discursive practice and also in the conceptions of dialogical relationships, social voices and chronotope formulated by the previous mentioned theory. Still in the theoretical field, we have established an interconnection with the theories coming from the Cultural Studies (Hall, Woodward) about the identity, which conceives it as multiple, fragmented, non-fixed, so that, the subject assumes different identities, not always coherent, at different times, depending on the context in which they are approached. The research is situated in the frames of Applied Linguistics, which considers language as the center of its studies and settles on the border of an open number of areas of knowledge expanding its possibilities of investigation by means of the interdisciplinary. Our corpus consists in 20 electoral propaganda videos aired on TV during the Free Election Time in 2010 campaign; among these, 14 videos are Dilma Rousseff s propaganda and 06 videos are Rosalba Ciarline s propaganda. We seek for the purpose of the analysis to identify the identities which emerge from the discourses about the candidates in propaganda videos broadcasted in the referred campaign, as well as realize the dialogical relations established in these discourses and even if the identity construction of these subjects is located in the same axiological axis. The corpus analysis revealed that the multiple cultural identities of the candidates campaigning emerge in the discourses circulating in the electoral propaganda aired on TV such as: the identities of pioneer woman, competent, sensitive, mother, grandmother, religious. And, yet, those are changeable as the electoral demands, in other words, the need to obtain support and votes, outline a fluid identity construction about the candidate to the position in question