PSDB's policies: regression and outsourcing

Last week, when announcing a cash grant to fund the treatment of drug addicts in private therapeutic communities, the governor of São Paulo, Geraldo Alckmin, stated that the initiative represents "another step towards facing the great challenge of the modern world," referring to crack cocaine. However, according to mental health and drug addiction specialists, the state government has actually taken another step backward by treating the problem as if it were merely a matter of funding, instead of offering patients a humane and comprehensive treatment program.

After launching the state program of compulsory hospitalization and creating artificial spaces to accommodate drug addicts – such as the use of the Pinel psychiatric hospital, to the detriment of the treatment of patients with mental disorders – the São Paulo state government decided to adopt the old practice common to the PSDB (Brazilian Social Democracy Party) administrations of delegating public policy actions, giving up on doing its part and confronting this serious social and health problem.

As announced, the benefit will be granted through a card, which will only be accepted at registered entities. However, nothing is yet known beyond the fact that there will be financial assistance. As is its custom, the government has not clarified what the treatment guidelines will be, what the criteria will be for selecting the entities and patients, and how social control over the actions of these communities and oversight of the money spent will work.

According to experts, this is an obscure proposal that could foster a market for the treatment of chemical dependency, as well as serve political interests. According to the president of the Psychologists' Union of the State of São Paulo, Rogério Giannini, the initiative is yet another setback in a path that began with compulsory hospitalizations. Giannini believes that, in their vast majority, these communities propose a psychiatric-like practice of forced abstinence and isolation, without clinical care or multidisciplinary groups, which is a basic principle of care established within the Unified Health System (SUS). There are also numerous reports of forced labor related to these communities.

The psychologist also argues that encouraging isolation is not a good approach, since psychological and drug addiction issues are social, not individual, and therefore require multidisciplinary care. He believes that institutionalizing aid can encourage families to seek inpatient treatment as if it were the only solution, turning treatment into a market and further discouraging the development of public policies.

As can be seen, the PSDB governments never tire of repeating the formula of outsourcing public policies, adopting exclusion as a method of treating drug addicts through internment in therapeutic communities.

In Minas Gerais, the Anastasia government's program to combat drugs, "Alliance for Life," is no different and reinforces the hygienist and segregative character of the PSDB's policies in dealing with the issue. There, the program, which also subsidizes hospitalization in private clinics, includes the repressive presence of the police and mental health agents in places where drugs are consumed.

These measures are completely out of step with the federal government's national plan, which advocates a broad, systematic, modern, and courageous policy to combat drugs. With a projected budget of R$ 4 billion by 2014, the Integrated Plan to Combat Crack and other drugs articulates measures aimed at increasing the availability of healthcare treatment, prevention, support, social reintegration, and public safety.

The worst part is that the PSDB (Brazilian Social Democracy Party) governments politically exploit the social outcry and the desperation of families to institute dubious actions, instead of fulfilling their role and investing resources in public policies, such as prevention campaigns and a protection network that truly welcomes drug addicts, respecting their rights and seeking their reintegration.