[Psychiatric reform and social participation: a case study]

The psychiatric reform in Brazil articulates several dimensions - conceptual, technical, administrative, legislative and cultural. It is aimed at overcoming the psychiatric paradigm based on isolation and exclusion of the mentally ill. The Reform makes part of the Brazilian Health System and presupposes a hierarchical system, municipality, participation and social control. Besides the advances made in the administrative dimension, in the state of Mato Grosso the reform takes place in centralized management contexts, revealing an apparent contradiction.

Analyzing the participative processes in the construction of the psychiatric reform in Cuiabá and in the state of Mato Grosso by means of analyses of documents of the Health Councils and Conferences held over the period 2000 to 2005. The fragility of the political processes of the Health Councils hampers their constitution as environments for articulating new practices. The process of changes toward the psychiatric reform is in accordance with a new management, determined by new financing models - reduction of hospitalizations and not hospital-centered care. This is possible because it is not a result of criticisms to the asylum logic represented in the analyzed dimensions of the Brazilian Health System.