The teaching of Psychiatric Nursing Course in the Nursing Undergraduate Programs in Ceará, topic of this study, is a reality that has been building up, fusing itself, in a broader context, the teaching of Nursing as a whole. To study it, attempts have been made in order to go deep in the Institutions' formal discourse, (Syllabuses, Course Programs) and in the ideological discourse of social actors which are responsible for the passing on the knowledge absorbed there, produced and reproduced. In the analysis under a structural-historical approach it has been possible to notice that the Psychiatric Nursing Courses are going through a moment of reflection, uncertainties and changes which have been originated by the process of syllabus reform and of the psychiatric assistance. The change of paradigm still turns out be an utopia, not wholly shared by everyone concerned, yet searched for by the majority.
psychiatric nursing teaching; psychiatric reform; mental health nursing; nursing education