OBJECTIVE: To reflect on work processes in the primary care network of the SUS (Brazil's National Health System), focusing on the care practices in mental health. METHODOLOGY: Interviews with 12 workers of the Family Health Strategy: physicians, nurses and community health agents; participant observation of the daily routine of the Family Health Unit; home visits. RESULTS: The work processes in health are bureaucratically and hierarchically organized and the care practices scrutinize users based on the knowledge/action of each professional category. The specialism logic is recurrent and the teams, in general, do not receive the users well, do not attend/ to the demands and end up referring users to other units. CONCLUSION: We believe that with a new work and management arrangement mode it is possible to interfere in the subjectivity and/ in the culture that prevails among the health workers, intensify the therapeutic bond and the intersection between knowledge and practices, and produce work processes that result in receptivity and responsibility for the user's life.
Family Health Strategy; Psychosocial Care Strategy; Mental Health; Work Processes