Assisted House, a place to live facilitator of social inclusion for long–term institutionalized patients

Abstract

The present paper analyzes the process of constitution of the alternative device Casa de Medio Camino in its modality of Assisted Housing from a Regional Center of Public Mental Health of the province of Santa Fe, Argentina. To this end, it will focus on the problems of the effects of institutionalization in patients with long–term subjective suffering in a monovalent hospital: how to overcome them during the processes of social inclusion consistent with the policies of de–asylum? We will make, first, an approximation to two international deinstitutionalization processes, the Italian and the French, emphasizing the residential devices and the contributions they propose. We then compare it with the local device. It will be taken as normative frameworks of the houses of coexistence, antecedents of laws in this area until arriving to the sanction of the first National Law of Mental Health Nº 26.557 (LNSM). Finally, the particularities of the process of constitution of the local halfway house and the deinstitutionalization of four patients will be analyzed. The conclusions will set out the contributions, scope and institutional characteristics of this process.