Mental health care practices in primary health care: an analysis based on experiences developed in Florianópolis, Brazil.

This article analyzes mental health care practices in primary health care (PHC) in the city of Florianópolis, which were based on proposals by Abilio Costa-Rosa regarding the asylum-psychiatric and psychosocial modes of care. The methods involved the following: a) the contextualization of the empirical field with documental analysis and interviews with managers; b) mapping interventions through interviews with professionals from nine selected Family Health Teams (ESF); c) deepening the understanding about these actions through observations and interviews with professionals and 20 case studies, which were systematized in accordance with the flowchart proposed by Merhy through interviews with service users and analysis of records. It was identified that the actions aimed at access and monitoring of the cases involved the whole team, and that medical and pharmacological treatment was centrally administered. Interventions based on words, socio-communitarian interventions and interventions based on the body were also present, and they showed the potential to operate from a perspective of valuing autonomy and singularity, aspects which are often underused when psycho-social approaches are absent. The need to improve care models and to bring together psychosocial care and PHC is suggested.