Deinstitutionalization and autonomy: outcomes from a Brazilian mental health policy

Therapeutic Residential Services (SRT, in Portuguese) are structures implemented in the context of the Brazilian Psychiatric Reform (BPR), which aims to support psychiatric deinstitutionalization. This paper compares residents of SRTs in two cities in Brazil, analyzing the relationship among the deinstitutionalization strategies and the different types of autonomy they produce. Nineteen individuals from two cities (referred to as Paulo Delgado - PB and Franco Basaglia - FB) participated in this study. Participant observation visits were performed, and five managers and professionals who worked at the psychosocial care networks were interviewed. Narratives were created based on the field diaries and the transcription of the interviews. All the participants raised their degree of autonomy, when compared to the time in which they lived in the psychiatric hospitals. The different ways in which SRTs are organized in both cities produced different manners of exercising autonomy: in PD, home autonomy predominated, while in FB, autonomy in circulating throughout the territory predominated. In both cities, autonomy in managing financial resources was restricted. It was concluded that public policies for deinstitutionalization were effective, although their operationalization could be enhanced.