Exercise of human rights of institutionalized persons: perception of psychiatric hospital professionals.

Objective: to comprehend the existing possibilities for the exercise of human rights by persons with mental disorders who are institutionalized in a psychiatric hospital, from the perception of professionals.

Method: this is a qualitative descriptive-exploratory study conducted at a Psychiatric Hospital in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. For data obtention, eleven professionals responded to a semistructured questionnaire. The traditional content analysis proposed by Bardin based the data analysis.

Results: the professionals know the human rights and try to preserve them in the hospital scope, although they recognize that the persons hospitalized are not entirely respected due to the lack of public policies or their non-suitability to the Brazilian reality.

Final Considerations: the structuring of extra-hospital services is necessary, as well as the comprehension of the professionals that act in psychiatric hospitals about the objectives and the functioning of such devices to assure opportunities of exercising rights by institutionalized persons.