This article analyzes user viewpoints regarding mental health care, with a focus on comprehensiveness and access at Psychosocial Care Centers (PCCs). It is a qualitative study with theoretical and methodological references of the Fourth Generation Evaluation and application of the Hermeneutic Dialectic Circle technique. Twelve users of ten mental health services in Fortaleza were interviewed from March to May 2011. Themes of the study were grouped from the narratives, with the hermeneutics of Paul Ricoeur as the benchmark for analysis. The thematic categories were: viewpoints on mental healthcare; conflicts between supply and the subjective need to receive; similarities and differences: from tutelage to autonomy; absence and belonging: open PCCs and non-community centers; between stigma and humanization. The main findings are: the PCCs are seen as spaces for conviviality able to establish affective and social networks; stigma, prejudice and tutelage are present in the services, in their families and in the community; asylum practices persist in alternative services; the humanization of care extends access and bonding in the services; the trajectory of users of the Unified Health System occurs due to their social and health needs.
Access; Comprehensiveness; Mental health; Understanding; Hermeneutics; Social and community networks
