Manejo comunitário em saúde mental e experiência da pessoa^*

The importance of community support to people who present problematic behaviors, particularly to the role played by the family as a social support network in the recovery and social reintegration of the sick person, is the main emphasis of this article. Practices and actions on which family and other community members engage are discussed through the idea of community therapeutic management , assumed to constitute a set of initiatives of certain social networks, meant to face the implications resulting from the health problem, among which are daily care, treatment seeking behavior and efforts towards one’s social rehabilitation and reintegration.