Symposium "Drug Prejudice"

Understand the social and health issues in the consumption of psychoactives. That was the purpose of the 1st Symposium "Prejudice with Drugs: How far does your scientific knowledge go?" promoted by Escola Bahiana de Medicina e Saúde Pública. The event, which took place on May 23, at Campus Cabula, was organized by teachers of Public Health Marlene Barreto and Ricardo Araújo, together with students from the Dentistry course.

During the opening of the symposium, professor Marlene Barreto spoke about the choice of theme addressed at the event. “This semester, we decided to talk about drugs, as it allows us to expand the work done in the classroom, in the subject of Public Health. We work with the extended clinic from the perspective of the biopsychosocial subject, so this subject has a biological one, but it also has a subjective dimension, which is part of a social context. So, it is from this line of thought that we are here today discussing psychoactive drugs”.

Professor Ricardo Araújo tells how the discussion about drugs in academia is still taboo and the relevance of talking about the subject with future health professionals: “We brought the proposal to address this issue in a scientific way, because in everyday life , we hear a lot of misinformation about drugs. We want professional ways to understand what are the problems related to psychoactive drugs and the context in which the user is inserted, with the objective of not simply judging these people, but understanding this social issue with a synergistic look”.

The People Development Coordinator at Bahiana, Luiza Ribeiro, expresses her opinion about the importance of dealing with this issue: “We, who work with care for the other, have to look at people and understand their stories rather than judging the situation in which they find themselves with consumption of psychoactives. It is a life lesson to understand drug issues, and all our students, future psychologists, dentists, physiotherapists and doctors will work with patients who suffer from this situation and need to know how to deal with it in a humanistic way."

The symposium had a diversified program, in which the following perspectives were exposed: clinical ethics in the care of users of alcohol and other drugs; drug use and academic training; the management of medical and psychological interventions in the consumption of psychoactive drugs; and the legalization of drugs, this being the theme mediated by the judge of the Judicial District of Conceição do Coité, Dr. Gerivaldo Alves Neiva.

One of the main speakers was Dr. Antônio Nery, founder of the Center for Studies and Therapy of Drug Abuse (CETAD/UFBA), who explained how important it is to understand about drugs in an ethical and social way. “The university is a privileged place for training, and this phenomenon of drug use has been very disliked. We therefore need to show students that the problem is not drugs but people. They are people who live and have difficulty, get sick and end up seeing psychoactive drugs as an alternative to life. These academic meetings are essential for us to address social problems.”

Several students and professionals attended the event. Nursing technician Dulce Matos explains what she thought of the symposium: “I really liked it, it was very enriching. The topic discussed is something broad and differentiated. For us, health professionals, it is very important to understand the life of the patient who uses psychoactive substances”.

The 7th semester student of Dentistry Isabela Caetano was one of the organizers of the symposium and shared about why studying drugs adds academic and professional training. “Due to our clinical demand, we began to see that many patients had drug addiction and that understanding what this means for the life of the person suffering from this problem makes a difference in health care. When we talk about legalization, we need to know, based on scientific theory, from a health and legal point of view, how drug use influences the lives of citizens”.