Since its inception, Brazilian psychiatric care has been based on interning the mentally ill in psychiatric hospitals and on the social exclusion of patients. Ever since the end of the military regime in the eighties, this assistance has been undergoing a transformation that proposes the treatment of the mentally ill by means of community services, replacing psychiatric hospitals. The occupational therapy profession, whose practice used to focus on the occupation of patients within hospitals, in the light of the transformation of psychiatric care, has sought theoretical, technical and political development for working in these substitutive services, in terms of prevention, health promotion, treatment, rehabilitation and social inclusion. The objective of this article is to present certain occupational therapy practices based on paradigms that emphasize the importance of treatment and inclusion of the mentally ill in society, highlighting an experience that is currently being carried out in Botucatu, São Paulo State, Brazil, by a non-governmental organization. It was possible to conclude that the profession, in uniting interdisciplinary understanding and in concerning itself with the needs and difficulties of patients' daily lives, presents an instrument conducive to community assistance.
Psychiatric care; mental health; social inclusion; occupational therapy