Meira LRVS. 
Prevenção quaternária em saúde mental : Uma revisão integrativa da literatura [Quaternary prevention in mental health. Integrated literature review]. 
Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. Trabalho de Graduação em Medicina [Medical Undergraduate Research]. 2014:40p.

http://www.ph3c.org/PH3C/docs/27/000281/0000671.pdf

Introduction: Prevention Quaternary is defined as the action taken to identify a patient at risk for excessive medicalization, to protect him from new medical invasion, and to suggest ethically acceptable interventions.

Objectives: To identify, analyze and summarize scientific evidence available on the practice of Quaternary Prevention in collective mental health to thereby perform an integrative review about this issue and provide recommendations for health professionals.

Methods: This study consisted of an integrative review of scientific literature carried out according to the following steps: defining a research question, searching for publications according to inclusion and exclusion criteria, data collection, data analysis, discussion of results and presentation of the integrative review.

Results: The final sample consisted of 13 publications, which included 10 original articles, 1dissertation, 1 meta-analysis and 1 letter to the editor. 38.4% of these publications was classified as observational clinical studies and 46.1% as theoretical studies.

Discussion: There was a lack of scientific literature on Quaternary Prevention in mental health, as only 7.6% of the sample made direct mention of the subject. Most studies (61.5%) focused on the issue of medicalization in mental health, showing the predominance of scientific production related to this field.

Conclusions: It is necessary to conduct more scientific studies on Quaternary prevention in mental health. The theme of Quaternary Prevention is still little known by health workers. Health professionals should question the medicalization of human problems as if they were mental disorders. The mental health care should be based on careful listening to the patient, emphasizing the subjectivity of the subject. Health professionals should recognize that many of the complaints related to mental health arise from complex social and economic problems. The empowerment of patients with mental disorders should be encouraged by health professionals. Treatment with psychotropic drugs must be based on Evidence Based Practices.

Keywords: medicalization, mental health, psychiatry, disease prevention