Professional’s perceptions about municipal public policy for people living with hoarding disorder

Abstract

Public policy, as a means of the government’s authority to solve society’s problems, is passive of approaches for understanding how it functions. This dissertation intends to do as such, by analyzing the perceptions of professionals working with municipal policy to assist people living nearby Curitiba-PR city that struggles with Hoarding Disorder. To build the repertory for an exploratory-descriptive type of qualitative research, interviews with municipal service workers were collected, then, the content was analyzed using thematic analysis. Hoarding Disorder, distinguished by the difficulty in getting rid of acquired objects, has as special manifestation the acumulation of animals, and entails suffering for itself and the community. The Municipal Committee created to address this issue is multi-professional, enabling access to health care, animal care, sanitary guidelines, and other relevant interventions. From this survey, it was possible to understand that the multi-professional nature of the Committee is essential in this field, instead of concentrating only psychiatric and psychology professionals for the task. The patient’s therapeutic evolution is gradual and involves recidivisms, therefore, the professionals’ expectations regarding each case needs to, preferably, consider the specificity of the patient’s suffering condition, and foresee alternatives that solely prescribe the suppression of symptoms, such as harm reduction.