RECONTAR O INVISÍVEL: EXPERIÊNCIAS DE LUTO POR COVID-19

Abstract

This work undertakes an investigation of the processes of mourning, grief and loss as a result of covid-19 deaths. The study originally starts from the researcher's work on the healthcare frontline of the covid-19 pandemic assistance as a hospital psychologist and, subsequently and additionally, from her work as a member of the team of psychologists, through a University Extension Project that belongs to the Federal University of Bahia. The socio-historical circumstances of the Covid-19 Pandemic in Brazil, added to the context of health restrictions in hospitals, created an invisible dimension on care, terminality and death in hospitals. To understand such experiences, it was necessary to undertake an interdisciplinary reading of the pandemic, guided from a theoretical lens that articulates psychoanalysis and human sciences, from which we decanted the research question: how were the grieving processes of people who lost family members as a result of covid-19 after being hospitalized? It is configured as a qualitative and retrospective study that adopts the Construction of Clinical Cases in Psychoanalysis as a methodological strategy. The clinical cases investigated and the results of this research reflect that the effects of the serious political crisis, the social catastrophe and the collective health emergency of the Covid-19 Pandemic in Brazil, as well as the transformations of death and dying in hospitals, began to integrate part of the elements of pain from mourning losses caused by covid-19. The processes of terminality, funeral and/or farewell rituals, were frankly crossed or subtracted and became a dimension of increased emotional suffering in the experience of these losses, since they were translated by the mourners as experiences of an unworthy death. A feeling of political outrage and the effects of the media and mediatization in the pandemic also stand out and affects in these mournings. This study highlights singular experiences of grief and identifies some clinical phenomena, which contribute to understanding their specificities and the relevance in the need for care for people experiencing these losses today.