This work approaches the contradictions that are present in the teaching of Psychiatric Nursing and Mental Health in four public universities in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. It consists of a qualitative study based on a dialectic referential. The instruments used for the investigation were the programs of the courses of Psychiatric Nursing and Mental Health and interviews with fifteen teachers and fourteen students of the area. The central themes of the analysis were the conceptions and scenarios in which the teaching of Psychiatric Nursing and Mental Health takes place. It was observed that these courses focus predominantly the concepts of normality and pathology during the cycle of life and are influenced by the discourse of preventive psychiatry and by psychoanalysis. It was also noticed that the courses mentioned adopt a psychodynamic approach. The majority of the training in the area still takes place in big psychiatric hospitals and emphasizes psychopathologies and its psychosocial determinations which consolidate the hospice model.
teaching; psychiatric nursing; mental health