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For a long time, the management of mentally disabled individuals was restricted to practices of aggression, physical and chemical restraints and confinement in spaces known as asylums. The Psychiatric Reform emerges as a break with these old practices and offers a new model of care for this user with psychic suffering. Nurses are fundamental in this care, however, sometimes their practice is still based on the old hospital-centred model. This paper therefore has the following objectives: to analyse the role of nurses in mental health services, to describe their duties in these services, to carry out a literature review on the role of nurses in this health sector and to describe the author's experience in the field of mental health residency. In the field of mental health, care is shared between different professional categories and this paper, as well as emphasising the importance of nurses, highlights other groups of health professionals who work brilliantly every day in search of the uniqueness of the subject with mental suffering.
About the author
Nurse graduated from the Anna Nery Nursing School (EEAN/UFRJ) and specialised in Mental Health at the Psychiatric Institute of the University of Brazil (IPUB/UFRJ). She is currently a lecturer in Mental Health at EEAN/UFRJ and is studying for a degree in Biological Sciences at UFRJ.
