My family and I opened Novo Nascer in 2013 with a clear purpose: the deep desire to build a modern and humanized place to treat people who are addicted to alcohol, drugs and suffer from other mental health disorders.
Since I was very young, I lived with people who went through the intense work of rescuing their own life, having to overcome their own prejudices and barriers to a new, productive and happy life. The issues of addiction and disorder were like that inside my house.
The experience of going to drug houses for countless times, under an overpass, on the street at dawn, in dangerous places, where you do not know what you will find, to rescue a loved one, is unforgettable. Monitoring human suffering so closely made me rethink the support tools we had at the time, so far from being able to give real opportunities for rehabilitation.
At that time, I got to know several institutions and realized that many were far from knowing how to care, in fact, for mental health patients. Many of these places had still very experimental, amateur, even torturous methods. Very similar or worse places than prisons, based on punitive processes and that still did not follow up on families, places where it was not clear how the treatment was, there was no day hospital or after care. How to leave a loved one in a place like that, no matter how much you needed it? It is a complicated situation.
In most of these places, people were seen only because of their illness and not as complete individuals, each with different complex characteristics. Consequently, treatments were depersonalized, with collective approaches, as if all individuals could achieve recovery in the same way. In those settings, people were easily labeled as drug users for life and thus they failed to treat them in a comprehensive manner.
After so many searches, accumulated knowledge and a sense of the panorama of treatments offered, the creation of a space with all the necessary arrangements for a real and lasting rehabilitation was the next natural step.
I confess that I never imagined one day to found and manage an institution like Novo Nascer. However, since I was very young, I have always been linked to an incessant spiritual search and philosophical meaning for life. At 18, I made the decision to co-found a religious life community in Arcoverde, Hinterland of Pernambuco. The following year, at 19, I joined a religious order in the interior of France. And in India, a few years later, I discovered the universe of ancient and holistic medicine (which sees the individual as a whole), with integrative practices.
I graduated in Law and followed with a master’s degree, conducting research on immaterial property and access to medicines. At the same time, I specialized in business management, also running my own law firm. Later I took an MBA in Hospital Administration and Health Management, in São Paulo. Today I continue participating, together with Novo Nascer professionals, in congresses and events in the area of health and mental health in Brazil and around the world.
Novo Nascer’s treatment program has evolved, based on the experience of our specialists, who are also constantly updating academically and, of course, listening to patients and their families. We think of a type of therapeutic program focused on the patient as a unique individual, who needs to be aware and deal with their main problems in order to be solidly structured.
Today my greatest satisfaction is witnessing the rehabilitation of so many people and knowing that so many more will receive the help they need to live their best life.
