ABSTRACT
The article proposes to discuss the impacts of violence on the daily experience and living conditions of workers and users of the Unified Health System, who live and work in urban areas designated as ‘conflagrated territories’. To encompass the complexity of the theme, we focus on two sets of questions, which are interrelated to different fields of knowledge: i) territories in the field of health and, more specifically, the descriptive conflagration; ii) the phenomenon of urban violence – considering the armed disputes over the power and command of drug traffic in convulsed territories from slums – and its impacts on the work of Primary Care. From the autoethnography, different scenes experienced in Primary Care units in the city of Rio de Janeiro were brought. Was observed an overlap of invisibilities and violence that generate mental suffering and expose several challenges and dilemmas in the provision of care in these territories. It is proposed to expand the concept of convulsed territory to encompass the social processes related to the phenomenon of violence and to give visibility to the need for an effective transformation of the living and health conditions of communities. We understand the importance of interdisciplinary and intersectoral articulation, given that this complex social problem impacts public health.
KEYWORDS
Primary Health Care; Mental health; Social vulnerability; Violence