CONCEPTIONS REGARDING SOCIAL IDENTITY OF THE PERSON WITH MENTAL SUFFERING IN NURSING STUDIES

This integrative review aimed to present a summary of the knowledge published by nurses on the conceptions of the social identity of the person with mental suffering. It included 15 articles selected from the databases, submitted to the adaptation of the questionnaire validated by Ursi-2005, for construction of a summary table. Publications from 2001 to 2011 were included which presented nurses among their authors; for the search, the descriptors were social identification and mental health and nursing. The results indicate that 66.7% of the phenomena studied in the articles refer to issues of ethnicity and all the publications revealed elements which contribute to the configuration of the social identity as a feeling of belonging, uprootedness, adaptation to a new culture, social support, political or historical-social happenings, stigmatization and autonomy. The absence of a theoretical conception of social identity in the studies did not stop the authors from listing contributions to the improvement of research and to nursing practices directed at people with mental suffering.