[Family and mental disease: the difficulty of living with differences]

This study started from the reflections on the Psychiatric Care Reform and the desinstitutionalization process. The goal of this study is to identify the social representations built by the patients' relatives on the mental health-disease phenomenon. For analysis we have adopted the social representation referential through the Moscovici perspective. Eight relatives of the patients were interviewed. We have identified the mentioned relatives, considering those who are really different, as the center of their social representations. We have point out the importance of the mental health professionals to give careful considerations on their interventions, regarding to the knowledge emerged from the report of the patients' relatives.