Abstract
State policies aimed at mental health in Brazil developed in the twentieth century, and were marked successively over this period by asylum and moral treatment models. From the second half of the twentieth century, psychology is instituted as science and profession to fit the proposal of moral treatment and social adjustment of those considered “deviant.” The advent of the legal and normative reformulation of the health care model, as a result of the 1988 Constitution and Laws 8,080 and 8,142/1990, a new field of practice and practice is put to the psychology professional, even though the formation remained the same. This article is the experience report of a psychologist in a mental health service in the state of Mato Grosso, between 2007 and 2009, which seeks to reflect on professional training and the construction of professional practice in the search for the effectiveness of this new model of mental health care, focused on health and psychosocial rehabilitation. It was verified that although the service was implemented vertically, a new conception of mental health was built, in a movement to reconstruct the meaning of the purpose of that health unit. It is concluded that mental health services are formative spaces for the reconstruction of professional practice and citizenship.
Professional Practice; Psychology; Mental Health