[Mentalmente Sanos: an experience with a community approach]

Due to the need to transform psychiatric care and transcend from a model focused on clinical care towards a community model, Mentalmente Sanos (Mentally Healthy) emerges as an initiative from the academy under the teaching services agreement between the Universidad del Valle and the State Social Enterprises Health Network E.S.E Ladera. This support group, created in 2009 by people with mental disabilities who participate freely and voluntarily, promotes processes of social inclusion and social skills in everyday life. It convenes students and professors of Occupational therapy, Medicine and Psychiatry. Methodologically speaking, it is a space of joint construction based on the approach of the capacities and the community. Activities are planned and developed weekly ensuring the participation of all parties involved, taking into account their interests, concerns and capacities. Mentalmente Sanos, besides enabling social inclusion processes and the implementation of a community approach, is an opportunity to reflect on the construction of the individual from a social model of disability and the importance of linking institutional actors to ensure the implementation of community care strategies.