[Psychiatric nursing and modern nursing in Rio de Janeiro: a history lesson]

The present study is the result of an essay written for the discipline Research Laboratory of Nursing History. It refers to the interest and struggle of the Brazilian Association of Nursing (ABEN), in the 1940s, in Rio de Janeiro, to make professionals of this area aware of the need of the inclusion of nursing in the psychiatric field in Rio de Janeiro. Our objective is to present the difficulties of this insertion, although the beginnings and the regulation of the nursing profession in Brazil started in a school of nursing, in the Psychiatric Hospital of Rio de Janeiro. In order to present the difficulties for this inclusion, we analyzed the documents that prescribed the regulation of the nursing profession, in the psychiatric area of the hospital mentioned above. Results indicate that standards established by Anna Nery Nursing School were broken, since psychiatric assistance was denied by this school until 1949, while the Nursing School Alfredo Pinto provided this kind of care since 1890. It is important to point out the strategic and historical role of ABEn as the coordinator and motivator of discussions regarding the course of the nursing profession.