[For a society without secure psychiatric hospitals].

The article explores the possibility of defending a society without secure psychiatric hospitals in Brazil. These hospitals have been sustained by persistent legal and psychiatric paradigms, including the notions "safety measure" and "dangerousness," in conjunction with particular social and historical circumstances. The open repression of so-called dangerous individuals is still practiced in the name of the principle of social defense, outdated concepts notwithstanding.

Sexuality, vulnerability to HIV, and mental health: an ethnographic study of psychiatric institutions.

This paper presents data from the ethnographic based formative phase of the Interdisciplinary Project on Sexuality, Mental Health, and AIDS (PRISSMA), sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and carried out in two psychiatric institutions in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Results from ethnographic observations, focus groups, and key informant interviews with different groups of mental health care providers and day hospital and outpatient mental health clients regarding conceptions of sexuality and HIV vulnerability are described. The results suggest a diversity of notions about sexuality by both groups and point out the high HIV sexual risk in this psychiatric population.