de Carvalho Guimarães

The Brazilian Psychiatric Reform is a process that aims to build a new social status for people suffering from mental illness, guaranteeing them citizenship, respect for their rights and their individuality, promoting their contractuality, the recovery of the individual’s ability to participate in the universe of social exchanges, goods, words and affections. Since its inception in Brazil in the 1980s, new mental health centres have been created that try to operate according to the logic proposed by the Reform. It’s a daily, passionate endeavour that demands a lot of investment from various actors, citizens, especially mental health workers, families and the users of the healthcare facilities themselves. Like any human process, it also has problems, questions emerge that need to be answered and confronted. This book presents the results of research by some of these passionate professionals, carried out in Rio de Janeiro, which presents some of these problems and their possible solutions.