This paper presents a historical retrospective on the scientific discourse about madness in Brazil, emphasizing the evolution of the notions of mental disease and of iatrogeny. The manicomial discourse, produced by Psychiatry, has introduced the scientific management of madness since the end of the 19th century. From the middle of the 20th century until the end of 1980, the discourse of mental health, organized by Psychiatry and by other disciplines, such as Psychoanalysis, Sociology and Anthropology, using a biopsychossocial understanding of man, represented a new attempt to reinforce the scientific management of madness. At the end of 1980, the deinstitutionalization discourse was introduced and, instead of proposing a new validation for the scientific discourse on madness, it indicated the necessity of its (de)construction: a radical epistemological operation to modify some of its main notions, such as the notion of the mental disease.
mental health; madness; history; discourse; Brazil