This study discusses the relations existing between the institutional aspects of a Psychosocial Care Center (Caps) and the experience of psychotic patients. Using the referential base of the social experience of psychosis, which is broader in scope than a description of the experience of symptoms, while considering cultural aspects of the experience, three case studies were conducted at two different times. All of the patients studied were interviewed in 1995 and again in 2003. In addition to interviews with the subjects themselves, open interviews were conducted with their families and their professional carers, thereby taking the social relationship networks of the patients into consideration. Three central aspects were emphasized: (1) study of the history of the illness; (2) study of the representations of the disease; and (3) description of the everyday life and social relationships of the patients. Aspects with respect to the treatment of psychotic patients included in Psychosocial Care Centers were conducted using an anthropological approach.
Mental health and culture; Personcentered ethnography; Institutionalization
