What was lost in hospitalizations:

reflections on rehabilitation strategies in a Protected Mental Health Residence

Abstract

This paper aims to reflect on rehabilitation strategies for deinstitutionalization within the framework of the discharge group of a protected mental health residence in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, focusing on the limiting factors and facilitators that emerge in this process. Based on a situated experience in a transitional, open-door residential device intended for people with severe mental health conditions, the analysis examines interventions oriented toward the recovery of autonomy, the reconstruction of social bonds, and social and labor inclusion. The analysis focuses on the discharge group as a key space for problematizing the subjective and social effects of prolonged hospitalizations, articulating the losses and the marks left by institutionalization in users’ lives with the strategies implemented in the process of psychosocial rehabilitation. Within this framework, three central axes of the rehabilitation process are developed: housing, social networks, and work, identifying in each of them the main obstacles and facilitating factors for discharge and community reintegration. The findings show that deinstitutionalization goes beyond the physical closure of psychiatric hospitals and requires intersectoral public policies and sustained institutional commitments over time.