Within the Brazilian context, starting at the end of the 20th century, the psychiatric reform presented the necessity to rescue the rights of citizenship for the mentally ill. The objective was to analyze citizenship as an instrument and an end of the team work process at six institutions of extra-hospital mental health care belonging to the public network of Cuiabá (MT), in the second semester of 2001. Marxist dialectics was used as the theoretical-methodological framework. It was observed that, even though citizen rights are affirmed for "patients", now called service "users", the paradox between the concept of citizenship and the "mentally ill patient" has not been discussed as a problem and consequently has not resulted in therapeutic attitudes that will permit or insure the participation of professionals and users as citizens. Citizenship is seen as an abstraction, excluded from the sphere of work and/or treatment. In an alienated work there is no explicit consideration of the contradictory situation in which the workers are agents that apply traditionally excluding knowledge and practices and at the same time must go beyond this role and produce practices of psychosocial care that will respect the citizen with mental disorders.
Mental health; Working process; Citizenship; Psychiatry; Psychiatric reform