The present study has as its aim to describe the daily work of a psychosocial care center and to aprehend how the users cared by such service experience the offered therapeutic process. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with eleven users of the Psychosocial Care Center, located in the countryside of São Paulo state. The data were submitted to Theme Analysis, based on Minayo. The themes which came from the data analysis, allowed the configuration of three topics. In the first one, the user experiences the treatment on an organicist focus of the care, assessed by the medical professional value, in the medicine-based approach and the symptom control. The second topic brings the perception of the space in CAPS as a helping scenario of social exchanges. And the third topic is about the therapeutic process as being towards the daily life of the users. Based in these data, we could reflect on the directions of the new facilities in mental health, the CAPS.
mental health; community mental health services; deinstitutionalization