O sofrimento psíquico na representação social de estudantes de medicina

The objective was to understand the social representations of students from a medical course about the mental health-illness process at a federal university in Bahia. This is a narrative research with a qualitative approach, carried out at a public university in the interior of Bahia. Theparticipants were 83 medical students. Data were collected through an electronic form from May to June 2021 and analyzed based on dialectical hermeneutics. The results were grouped into two empirical categories, namely: social representation of psychic suffering related to the concept of expanded health, and social representation of psychic suffering related to a decrease in quality of life. The findings of this study point to a change in social representations regarding psychological suffering in the academic environment, highlighting the importance of thinking about medical training in relation to Mental Health-Illness Process in an autonomous, free and multidimensional way, considering mental illness only as a of the countless constituents of an individual’s life.