Brazilian psychiatry has several historical, judicial, institutional, theoretical and technical records about the use of working activities in accordance with the asylum paradigm. The aim of the present study is to identify the functions, the goals, and the proposals of workshops in mental health care by means of the users' representations. In order to achieve this aim, a qualitative research was perfomed about the mental health services in the municipalities of Divinópolis and Belo Horizonte (MG). We made use of the semi-structured interview as a methodological resource. The data was processed according the method of the Discourse of the Collective Subject. The theoretical reference used is the paradigm of the practices in mental health, which comprises the asylum model and the psychosocial model. The data in this study put in evidence that workshops in mental health move towards psychosocial rehabilitation, as a device to materialize the psychosocial paradigm.
Mental health; Rehabilitation; Mental health services-trends