This paper proposes an expansion of dialogue in a double sense. Dialogue between the fields of Mental Health and Occupational Health, and dialogue between researchers and workers. Building on the methodological device of the Community Extended Search, we put in dialogue the academic knowledge and the knowledge of the everyday experience of workers from the Psychosocial Care Centers (Caps), to understand what are the resources, tools and standards available for the development of mental health work. We realize how much mental health workers have to be ingenious in their activities, making the management of numerous conflicting rules (administrative bureaucracy X plasticity; service supply X demand of users, demand of the municipal managers X demand of the state managers; Caps X clinic etc.), often without the resources and means necessary for performing their activities, weakening and depleting the worker in an "overdone use of himself."
mental health services; occupational health; activity of work; psychiatric reform; psychosocial care centers