Home-based therapeutic services emerge in the context of psychiatric reform in Brazil, as a step forward in the policy of de-institutionalization, as well as being essential services to overcome custody practices, typical of the asylum model. These services provide spaces for care, welcome and decent housing for people whose family and social ties have been affected by internment in psychiatric hospitals. The article seeks to evaluate the sociability network of users of home-based therapeutic services in Alegrete in the State of Rio Grande do Sul, based on a case report. This study is part of the research on 'Networks that Rehabilitate' - evaluating innovative experiments in the composition of psychosocial care networks. Data from semi-structured interviews with the six workers of the service were used. It was observed that the service provides unique and innovative experience to find solutions that bring people with long periods of psychiatric hospitalization back together with their family, the community and city life, thereby eliminating the segregation to which they were subjected. Coaching residents and workers in the creation of home-based therapeutic care services reveals the potential to reintegrate mentally handicapped patients into society.
Mental health; Mental health services; Social networking; Nursing