Crenças e comportamentos mágicos e religiosos no processo de saúde-doença de usuários de atenção primaria à saúde em Campina Grande - PB: Das causas do adoecimento aos métodos de tratamento

Abstract

Beliefs influence the way people relate, perceive reality, organize and explain themselves and the world, and because they are formed by cognitive processes innate to individuals and influenced by sociocultural contexts. Such processes are not free of errors and misunderstandings, sometimes leading to false correlations and erroneous inferences that are alien to material reality, resulting in the formation of magical beliefs. Magical thoughts and behaviors enter the health-disease process, influencing the way people understand illness, its causes, means of treatment and the process of adherence or non-adherence to preventive behaviors and health treatment. In order to map and know beliefs, superstitious behaviors and magical practices adopted in the health-disease process by users of the family health strategy in Campina Grande-PB, it was conducted a cross-sectional, descriptive, exploratory field research with a quantitative approach. The study included 100 users, aged 20 years or older, linked to family health teams. The data collection was carried out through interviews, using a questionnaire, containing sociodemographic variables and a Likert scale of magical and religious beliefs and behaviors. A descriptive statistical analysis was performed for sociodemographic data. An exploratory Factor Analysis was used to extract the factors from the Likert Scale. A Spearman's test was used to verify the correlation between sociodemographic characteristics and beliefs, superstitious behaviors and magical practices. Among the 100 users interviewed, 79% were female, 57% were between 20 and 49 years old, 86% self-declared Christian, family income of one minimum wage (39%), complete high school (36%). The exploratory factorial analysis resulted in the extraction of six factors grouped into three categories: explanation of the illness; health treatment; disease prevention. The factors ‘Influence of emotions’ (factor load between 0.520 and 0.666), ‘Spiritual influence’ (factor load between 0.525 and 0.736); ‘Faith- and religion-centered treatment’ (factor load between 0.592 and 0.797); and ‘Prevention of temperature variation’ (factor load between 0.635 and 0.887) obtained high agreement among the participants. The correlation between demographic characteristics and factors related to beliefs showed that participants with complete high school education tended to have lower adherence to magical beliefs; Christian participants showed greater adherence to religious beliefs; with increasing age, there is less adherence to some beliefs and greater adherence to others; The higher the income of the participants, the lower the adherence to magical beliefs. The findings show that magical and religious beliefs and behaviors are present in the daily lives of primary health care users and that sociodemographic characteristics exerted an influence on the levels of adherence to magical and religious beliefs and behaviors. It is hoped that future studies will be able to study and explore the theme with greater sociocultural accuracy.