"Attacked me in several ways, just didn't hit me": Social representations of violence among people in psychological distress

The present study aims to characterize the dimensions of the social representation of violence for persons in psychological distress; to understand the meanings attributed to violence and how they become tangible, and to identify the triadic relations arising in enunciations about violence. Qualitative and exploratory study was carried out with 20 people in psychological distress attending a Psychosocial Care Center in Brazil. We used semi-structured interview and sociodemographic questionnaire, analyzed by content analysis and basic descriptive statistics analysis. We identified multiple social representations about violence, anchored in the participants' own experiences, of others, and in the media, objectified into images of locations and forms in which they occurred, violent relationships, and social actors involved. Triadic relations involve society in general or people of the participants' social or regional circle. The recognition of stereotypes related to people in psychological distress and their association with the violence experienced and the several forms of violence perpetrated against this group, stands out.