Qualitative study with the approach of the Social Phenomenology that had as objective to know graduation students and egresses of a Nursing School percieve mental patient and, to understand how the education of psychiatric nursing reflects in this process. The "living student-type" perceives the mental patient as a different person, violent, without control, who loses the reason, without abilities and conditions of living socially, who awakes conflicting emotions as fear, prejudice and compassion. The egresses have mental patients as a person who needs help, because the lack of knowledge, psychic and emotional resources of the professionals, the relatives and the society favors the segregation and the exclusion. Thus, the education needs the practice subsidized theoretically by the axes that support the principles of the Psychiatric Reformation.
Psychiatric nursing; Education, nursing; Psychiatry