Community involvement in mental health

The author describes the process of dementia in Río Negro-Argentina but also the epic of the Camino Abierto Cultural Center that depends on a Public Hospital in a place where the asylum was closed more than 30 years ago. The existence of the center consolidated the hope of a favorable development for mental health responses in the city of Bariloche. This experience allowed us to see that there was no room for exclusion or confinement and that a Community Center can be absolutely inclusive only if it is developed in an inclusive environment. It is from this perspective that “community participation” is understood and spoken of here as a process and as a royal road to social inclusion. In this work we speak of a participation without passage to the psychiatric hospital because it constitutes a metaphor of the impossibility: of living outside the walls of being able of recovering. In this way it constitutes a valuable contribution so that the main components that constitute the anti-asylum reform system can continue to be developed and strengthened.