Group interventions in psychosocial care centers for alcohol and drugs: challenges of care practice

ABSTRACT Objective: to understand the challenges of care practice with group interventions Psychosocial Care Centers for Alcohol and Drugs. Method: qualitative intervention research developed with 30 professionals from four Alcohol and Psychosocial Drug Care Centers in a municipality in central Brazil from March to April 2019. We used a professional characterization instrument and conversation wheels to collect data that were submitted to the thematic modality of content analysis. Results: some challenges that permeate the practice with group interventions in CAPSad were evidenced, from the professionals' perspective, such as inadequate physical structure and scarcity of material resources; issues related to aspects of users such as difficulty in adhesion and commitment to groups, incompatible work schedules and lack of financial resources for travel to the centers; factors related to the competence of professionals as not having affinity to work with groups, absence of specific training, prioritization of other practices, demotivation, absence of care records and difficulty in performing the patient discharge and; aspects of work processes such as outpatient organizational culture, very high demand, insufficient human resources, lack of external supervision, few offers of therapeutic groups and lack of criteria for the definition of group coordinators. Conclusion: the challenges experienced include issues of inadequate physical structure and deficient material resources, difficulties related to the life contexts of users, competence of professionals and factors of the work processes of the services.