The aim of the present research is to determine how the mental health Policy Reform affected the Raul Soares Institute, the first public psychiatric hospital (asylum) in Belo Horizonte, tracing institutional initiatives that aimed to respond to criticisms on the mental houses and their set of procedures in usage since the 1960s, in the state of Minas Gerais. The research became a historiographic effort, carried out in 2007, dealing with oral and documental sources (interviews with psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses and others) and collecting information about facts that occurred in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Institutional analysis was taken as the theoretical support. The present study focused on initiatives that assumed the format of assisting and constitutional projects that aimed to remodel the Raul Soares Institute. In addition, paradigms of references and the contradiction-marked process of deinstitutionalization were made evident.
psychiatric reform; psychiatric hospitals; deinstitutionalization; history; Instituto Raul Soares