[The family and the mentally ill using day-hospitals: a case study]

The day-hospital, as a modality of psychiatric care, provides families with the possibility to experience greater contact with their mentally-ill relative during treatment and leads them to searching, together with such relative, for ways to facilitate the adaptation process of interaction in the family. This study aims at understanding how families and the users of day-hospitals interact out of their homes and at describing the experience narrated by a family. The family in this study was selected from one of the users of a day-hospital who had a previous history of hospital admissions for psychiatric treatment. Five members of the family under study were interviewed. Based on the experiences described by the subjects, two great thematic categories emerged: the family experiencing the day-hospital with its family member and the family-user relationships. The experiences narrated by the subjects in this study are rather significant for the construction of new possibilities in caring for the mentally-ill person's family.