A life story and an institutional path: youth, medicalization and social distress

A life story is presented for analyzing the manifestations of an individual path in dialogue with the elements the young people’s lives in popular groups. It focuses on the discussion of social equipment in the production of the senses, places and suffering of some people’s lives, which causes processes in which “diseases” and medicalization are generated from social problems. Based on the assumptions of ethnography researches, the path of a young was tracked for four years throughout her experience with social services that focus on infant and youth care, and mental health. It is considered that social politics should intervene in youth under a broad comprehension of the social problems; and also the area of mental health care, in connection with the social sphere, must take care of the suffering situations without the homogeneity of the needs, translating it into an iatrogeny and medicalization of the social. Key-words: Youth, Life Story, Social Services, Iatrogeny, Social