Ação grupal com mulheres-mães universitárias como estratégia de promoção de saúde mental

Abstract

In post-modernity, women have sought to occupy social spaces that do not reduce their personal fulfillment to the creation of children. From this perspective, being a woman-mother in a university context entails the challenge of reconciling different demands in the midst of sociocultural and personal demands of an idealized maternity and academic practice. This work aimed to reflect on situations of vulnerability to psychological distress and strengthen psychosocial protection factors from the development of a group program, of psychoeducational and emancipatory nature, aimed at protecting and promoting the mental health of college mothers. This is a research-intervention with implication of the subjects in the construction of the investigated field. Eighteen undergraduate and graduate students from public and private universities, with children up to 5 years old, were organized in two groups, composed of 8 and 10 members. In all, with each group, seven meetings were held, guided by generating themes, in which we tried to favor dialogue and the construction of a collective space for joint reflections and exchanges of experiences. In order to complement and contextualize the narratives obtained during the group process, the women participated in a semi-structured interview, and at the end of the meetings, they answered two questionnaires to evaluate the group experiences, one of them applied collectively and the other individually. The narratives recorded during the sharing of perspectives and experiences converged to the perceived insecurity of "being a woman", considering the gender inequalities, and to the socioemotional repercussions related to the challenge of experiencing the social demands and charges of the maternal role together with the demands of the academic and/or professional practices. Other striking points in the participants' reports were a history of depression or anxiety disorder; little or no support network, especially in cases of single motherhood and living far from the family; institutional harassment; and unfavorable financial or health conditions for the management of their activities. The participants highlighted the relevance of group practices for discussion about being a woman-mother in a university context and suggested that these actions should be inserted in the HEIs as a way to protect the mental health of students and strengthen their support networks. By providing spaces for awareness, reflection and joint construction of coping with vulnerable situations, the study showed the importance of understanding the myriad of factors that affect the mental health of women-mothers and to promote actions capable of minimizing gender inequalities, as well as to legitimize their life projects.