[Mental health nursing work: contradictions and current potentialities]. / O trabalho de enfermagem em saúde mental: contradiçõs e potencialidades atuais.

This study aimed to identify contradictions and challenges that are present nowadays in mental health nursing work, in the context of the Psychiatric Reform, on the basis of the historical-social construction of this working process. The Psychiatric Reform presupposes a new design of work purpose and instruments, which still have little visibility in nursing practice, and the possibility for the person in mental suffering to achieve the subject-citizen condition - way of being and work purpose - which is directly related with the subject-citizen awareness of the nursing worker.