Want to Stay, Wanting to Leave: The Ambivalence of Psychiatric Hospitalization

The dichotomy within the desire of staying or getting out of the hospital seems to be part of many user’s life whom are attended by mental health services. Thus, this paper intends to reflect on this issue, highlighting the main problems reported by some users when they were admitted to a psychiatric hospital in São Paulo, between the years 2005 and 2007, and the content analysis sustained from the perspective of social constructionism. It was concluded that the lack of a support network integrated extramural, and recurrent hospitalizations, hinder social reintegration and open space for the “want to stay in hospital”. However, this supposed desire, not without suffering. The statements marked by sorrowful faces, slips of the tongue or tears, calls for the reconstruction of their citizenship and autonomy, the only possible conditions to “can” go out.