The aim of this study is to understand the situation of the psychiatric institution today, with respect to the profile of the interned population and its perspectives face to the questions and proposals of the psychiatric reform and anti-asylums' movement. The project was developed in an institution at Bauru/SP, with interned women. The characterization of the sample was realized from the data of the registration system used by the institution, enrolling the following variables: age, civil status, education, naturalness, occupation, local of dwelling and diagnosis. It was made a quantitative and a qualitative analysis of the collected data. It was verified that the principal function of the psychiatric institution continues to be exclusion. The single possibility of resistance of the anti-asylums' movement becomes the necessity of construction of substitutive mental health's models that value people integrity and promote citizenship.
exclusion; psychiatric institution and anti-asylums fights
