Qualitative research in the context of Brazilian Psychiatric Reform: voices, places, skills/actions

This study sought to assess qualitative research based on the context of Brazilian psychiatric reform. An integrative review was conducted in the LILACS and SciELO databases resulting in a shortlist of 25 papers. Research subjects are workers, users and family members, the scenarios are predominantly psychosocial care centers and the themes preponderantly address the technical and care-related dimension of the reform. The analysis gave rise to two thematic categories: Brazilian psychiatric reform; complex social process or reform of models? - addressing the supremacy of scientific research concerned with care-related innovations and technologies in the field of mental health, to the detriment of the political, ideological and social aspects that constitute part of the Brazilian reform; Reform or revolution: social actors between brackets? - which brings a continuous revolution on all fronts as a proposal to reverse this situation, rallying the strength of social movements. There is an urgent need for rescuing the political framework and the direction of social movements in the class struggle, since it is not only a question of denial or complaint, but also of creating revolutionary ways to make the reform viable.