This study characterizes the social representations of the health-disease process of subjects resident in two districts of São Paulo, in order to identify the needs of health and the orientation of the nursing action. Free evocations recollections from 418 adults on the themes health and disease. Data analyse was developed thought a descriptive and structural analysis of the social representations, through the methodology of construction of the "picture of four houses", categorization and similitude analysis. The results show central senses of the representation, the positiveness of the health, are anchored in a divine entity, and accompanied of notions that associate health to prevention of diseases, to biological needs, to activity and to which the attitude assumed to the disease. The representation structure of disease is similar, in inverse sense, to the one of the health: god is the center of the social representation, in its negative version, being expressed in the body through the pain, of the death and the inactivity and - in the spirit - through the sadness and of the depression. The discussion is that psychological character of health and of disease, that is expressed under the psicossociais needs committed, and the consequent need of rethinking the technological model of work in nursing.
care taking in nursing; basic human needs; health-disease process; Social Representations