ABSTRACT
Several critiques of dominant psychiatry triggered the organization of different deinstitutionalization movements. This chapter presents some historical critiques of traditional psychiatry, which unfolded in different deinstitutionalization movements around the world. It highlights Italian Democratic Psychiatry for its influence on the Brazilian psychiatric reform process. Italian Democratic Psychiatry, the Antipsychiatry Movement proposed a sharp rupture with dominant psychiatry. The chapter discusses a brief overview of the history of, and challenges for, Brazilian mental health care. The complexity of mental health as a meaningful social and political process has been totally neglected. Much of the theoretical and epistemological fragility is sustained within the critical mental health models, which are supposedly alternatives to dominant psychiatry. The Brazilian psychiatric reform project came to be articulated in the Unified Health System’s principles and guidelines, in which the right to health stands out as a citizen’s right and a duty of the state, based on the principles of integrity, fairness and universality.
