This article highlight an effort of connection between areas of Mental Health and Community Psychology related to public health practice focused on promoting autonomy and citizenship. In this sense through a research on the role of therapeutic residences, such as construction strategy anti-asylum practices, we discussed other spaces of sociability as mental health promoters, highlighting those "asylum without walls" which lead the community for psychiatric patients. Spinoza's contribution is important, because his theory conceives the subject from the quality of the interactions between themselves, or better, as it affects and is affected in the meetings, which may be the promoters of the power to act or not. This qualitative research, with inspiration ethnographic, participated in these research forty residents of five therapeutic residences installed in three districts of a Great Vitoria in Espírito Santo, Southeast Brazil.
psychiatric reform; therapeutical residences; community