Social Conceptions of a Psychiatric Hospital in the Process of Closure

The study aims to understand the social conceptions of a psychiatric hospital in closing process. Participants live in a residential neighborhood near to the hospital, where three therapeutic residences (TRs) are located, whose residents are egress of the hospital. Through ethnographic perspective, 22 interviews were realized, addressing the evocations about the psychiatric hospital, its closure and the destiny of the egress. The psychiatric hospital was conceived as a reference to the inhabitants, being represented as a halfway house and conceived as a necessary place. The participants showed displeasure with the closure, but at the same time, a favorable position to its deactivation, based on interaction with the former inmates of the hospital that lives in the neighborhood, represented as non-aggressive. Participants suggested that TRs are transferred to remote locations. The representations observed indicate the need of keep the psychiatric hospital open or the creation of other similar spaces, providing the social withdrawal of the egresses. Thus, it is necessary to discuss the possibility for coexistence between supposedly different groups, since the tendency to removal, as observed in this study, can be as a process necessary for the defense of group identity, but must be fought.