Shared experience as the basis for a sense of belonging and social transformation

CECCO provides care-giving services as an integral part of mental health policy in the municipality of São Paulo, which aims to build an alternative to “isolation as the basis of treatment for mental illness”.
Individuals suffering from mental illness seek health professionals to provide acceptance and treatment for their condition; they seek a source of stability and continuity. Such is the underlying assumption for the proposals of the several different mental health units that comprise the municipal network.
We at CECCO are involved in building shared experience with our users. This means collective space in which activities we develop (therapeutic workshops) help us see beyond the pathology, to foster self-expression in everyday living situations.
Through shared experiences of daily life we focus fundamental issues of the human condition and encourage dialogue with the other, diversity, alterity and empathy.
Our users are a representative sample of the community in the periphery of the southern district of the municipality of São Paulo, comprising any individuals seeking activities that make shared experience feasible. We work with heterogeneous groups including all those affected by social exclusion processes.
Shared experience is one of the primary issues for this century. How can we develop our individuality with the prerogatives of collective life? As part of this challenge, through the acceptance of psychic suffering we build a space for social inclusion and thus improved health conditions for the population. CECCO provides an “ethical constitutive space” (Safra, 2004) enabling individuals to occupy their place in the human community as subjects.
Our practical experience shows that shared experience is an important tool for social development and improved community health conditions as a significant part of the “caring city” project.