This study aims to know the dynamic and controversial which is the practice in mental health. For that, it's analyzes the discourse of workers of mental health about the concept of on the concept of the clientele of the service. The corpus of this work is composed for interviews applied to 17 of the 25 professionals of mental health who work in a service substitute of a city of the Brazilian South Region. The theoretical-philosophical referential was the Critical Discourse Análisis. The methodological device was the "axiologic-discursive diagram". The results demonstrate that the workers assume relations of benevolence because the clientele conceptual undefinition, fruit of the difficulty in establishing what is normal and pathological in mental health. We wait that the study it contributes to problematize the process of consolidation of the Brazilian psychiatric reform.
Language studies; Mental health; Social sciences; Psychiatric nursing