The Family Health Program (FHP) arises as a new strategy for primary and secondary health services, including mental health. Based on these presuppositions, the objectives of this article are the following: get to know the perception of the nurses about FHP, identify difficulties pertinent to the promotion of mental health, and investigate the contribution of the psychiatric nursing within the FHP. Five nurses were interviewed that work on the FHP teams in the city of Passos-MG and the data was submitted and later on the content of the interviews was analyzed. The discussions revealed the need for qualification of the professionals to work as a team and with the family, while also showing up the need to make the help more humane, seen in this context as a pre-established activity without a greater involvement between team/community.
family health program; nursing; mental health