ABSTRACT.
Mental health is a critical node for the management of Primary Health Care, convened daily to welcome the individual and collective psychological distress and counting on minimum teams. Shortly before the VIII National Health Conference, which would establish foundations for a new Brazilian health system, a community health service was structured on the periphery of Porto Alegre-RS anticipatory to the Family Health Strategy, in which some teams already counted on psychologists at that time. This article seeks to reflect on the psychologist’s current place in the primary care level, based on more than two decades of experience work in psychology as part of the health care facilities of that service. Finally, it discusses the potential of the psychology’s insertion at the primary level when considering the complexity of a practice that involves attention, management, training and participation in the process of working in multi-professional teams.
Keywords:
Health psychology; community psychology; Unified National Health System