Community therapy as a strategy for promoting the mental health of professors in the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT Objective: To understand the perception of university professors about Integrative Community Therapy as a mental health promotion strategy. Methods: Qualitative, phenomenological and interventional research, conducted with professors of the Nursing course at the Universidade Estadual do Sudoeste da Bahia, Jequié, Bahia, Brazil. The experiential descriptions were produced through phenomenological interviews, whose resulting material was analyzed based on the Ambiguity Analytical technique. Results: The professors expressed a lack of interaction between them, a fact that has become a reality in everyday academic life and that has worsened in the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this context, the Community Therapy circles in a virtual environment proved to be effective in sharing psychosocial and physical demands, as well as in the collective discussion of problem situations and the search for joint solutions. Conclusion: The study highlights the potential of Community Therapy as an integrative and complementary practice to the Brazilian public health care model.