The different senses of care: considerations on assistance in mental health

In the last years we notice a significant increase in scientific works that focus on care in health and the humanization of assistance practices. This increase reflects, in part, the transformations brought in the field of the health by the implantation of Unified Health System - SUS in Brazil, their bases and directives. Specifically in the field of mental health, the redirection of the psychiatric presence, while advancing from a hospital model to one of extra-hospital attention, made possible the constitution of interdisciplinary psychosocial technologies, which originates a differentiated care. So, the present work aims to discuss the different senses of care, especially in mental health. It is a bibliographical and descriptive study, done by means of a search in databases of the Literatura Latino-americana en Ciencias de La Salud - LILACS and SciELO, using the keywords "care in mental health". The analysis of the bibliographical material showed that the conceptions associated to the understanding of the act of taking care and care itself are grounded in several different perspectives, namely, ethical, philosophical, instrumental-technical, political, cultural.