ABSTRACT
Aiming to identify the uses of the term deinstitutionalization and the meanings attributed to it in the field of mental health, a brief bibliographic review was accompanied by an ethnography in five events over two years. Mostly confused with dehospitalization and anchored in the contributions of Italian democratic psychiatry to Brazilian psychiatric reform, the concept of deinstitutionalization points to more than one possibility of dismantling and / or deconstructing psychiatric knowledge and practices. In addition, workers, users, researchers and other participants in scientific congresses and other forms of face-to-face meetings point to the importance of promoting social value in deinstitutionalization processes, indicating strategies to increase contractual power among the political debates.
KEYWORDS
Deinstitutionalization; Qualitative research; Mental health