Psychiatric reform and Brazilian dependence: between the archaic and the modern

Abstract This study carried out analysis of the Mental Health Policy, as part of the Brazilian Psychiatric Reform (BPR), based on the Marxist Dependence Theory (MDT). The objective is to understand the implications of BPR - related to the totality of the capitalist accumulation process - regarding services and epidemiology. A historical-descriptive perspective was adopted to approach the data on mental health in the city of São Paulo between 2008 and 2017, promoting a qualitative analysis through historical and dialectical materialism. The analysis demonstrates that the BPR is incomplete and hybridizes with different perspectives on health, which was verified by the permanence of asylum characteristics (the archaic) together with substitutive services (the modern). The study explains the contradiction between dependence and the constitution of social policy in a large city of a developing country.