Michel Foucault and the care of the self in the field of health: an integrative review

Abstract

Care of the self, identified by Michel Foucault as the practices of taking care of oneself and worrying about yourself, through meditation exercises, self-writing, examination of conscience among other activities that make it possible to looking at the self. Objective: The objective was to present how the care of self in the Foucaultian perspective is explored in the health area. Method: Integrative review, developed in the eletronic database Eletronic Libray Online (SciELO), PubMed.gov, Web of Science-Main collection (Thomson Reuters Scientific), and SCOPUS (Elsevier) with the keywords Foucault and Care of the Self, where initially we found 262 articles and after applying exclusion criteria, there were ten articles left. The selected articles made possible reflections on the ways of inciting self care that were approached through self-listening, awareness, physical activities, yoga, changing eating habits, meditation, crafts, sewing, crocheting, knitting and reflections about life. It is these practices of freedom that made possible the modification of the subjects and thus a better quality of life for professionals working with mental health, women's health and home care programs, chronic patients associated with asthma and diabetes, physically disabled and caregiver relatives.

Keywords

• Foucault
• cuidado de si
• terapia ocupacional
• enfermagem
• acontecimentos que mudam a vida