ABSTRACT.
The Community Mental Health Group (CMHG) is a mental health care promotion program, open to the community and inspired by the goals of Psychiatric Reform. The group has been developed over more than 23 years, through its practice, systematic observation and research. This study aimed to understand the role of the group coordinator within this group modality. The corpus of the research was constituted from six audio-recorded group sessions and transcribed in full. An original analysis was outlined in which all the coordinator's interventions were described, analysed and contextualized concerning the moment and development of the group session. Common axes have been identified, which characterize the interventions: ‘The framework in the Community Mental Health Group’, ‘The look at the human gesture in the contributions’, and ‘Coordinator's personal participation’. It was observed that the CMGH's coordination is related to the proposal of the activity and its theoretical, philosophical and empirical foundation, inspired by Classical Phenomenology. The framework, interventions and coordinator's participation appeared to foster the creation of an intersubjective care space, from a horizontal perspective, based on the task of recognizing significant daily experiences in the human being's maturing path. In this sense, this research highlights the relevance of the in-depth study of group practices’ aspects, such as group coordination, as a way of better describing and understanding them.
Keywords:
Mental health; groups; therapist role