Objective is to identify the knowledge of health professionals of Service of Mobile Emergency of Natal on the Brazilian Psychiatric Reform. Information was collected through semi-structured interviews with 24 health professionals stationed at the institution. The interviews were transcribed and submitted to the technique of thematic analysis revealed three categories of analysis: admission of the subject in crisis as social and family demands; Psychiatric Reform: legislation and reality in the SAMU-Natal, and the Brazilian Psychiatric Reform as a promoter of deinstitutionalization. The professionals showed misleading and reductionist understandings of the Brazilian Psychiatric Reform and, mostly, did not give credence to the current model of mental health care in guided psychosocial treatment, his lines referring to the need for hospitalization of psychiatric patients. In this sense, we realize that the hospital-centered model designed by classical psychiatry is still alive in the ideas of these professionals as a reference to the psychiatric emergency care.
Mental Health; Emergencies; Psychiatry; Health Services