The question that pervaded this thesis was to examine to what extent the therapeutic groups
Life Projects, offered to women in psychological distress, give support to their social (re)
integration, particularly with regard to the working lives. The theoretical framework adopted
to the contextualization of this thematic covered the determinations of the Ministry of Health
regarding the psychosocial perspective of care to users of CAPS and the Hannah Arendt
theoretical elaborations on human action in the context of active life. This study aimed to
understand how users of mental disorder CAPS in Recife-PE experience the therapeutic
groups Life Project and how such experiences impacting their daily lives. The project has as
specific objectives: to describe the work realized in the group; contextualize the social-family
and occupational environment experienced by the women participating users of research;
describe the everyday practical experience of users from the experiences in this group and
how it impacted on their daily lives. This is a qualitative research, whose narratives were
made through open interview, sociodemographic questionnaire and consultation documents
(records and group record book). For understanding the interviews, it was used the Wilhelm
Dilthey interpretivism, seeking to understand the meanings given to these therapeutic groups
in their occupational lives. In the process of unveiling, the obtained reports covered
behavioral and emotional aspects, especially to: better preparation and awareness of the
social-family conviviality; improvements in the personal level of welfare and feelings of
acceptance, appreciation and facilitation of comfort and emotional security in interpersonal
living. There were also reports that the experiences contributed to the return to professional
working lives and for the supply of the rescue of rehabilitation and social reintegration. The
narratives also show that most interventional procedures performed in these groups is aimed
at stimulating and encouraging other aspects of life, excluding the working lives, especially
to face the stigma of mental illness and the self-confidence for the social reintegration. The
reports on the therapeutic approaches mention a reasonable range of technical resources for
the achievement of what is proposed: thematic discussions on health and mental illness;
reflections on behavior; therapeutic riding and arts application. The manifested desires turn to
intending of the recovery of activities and acquisition of new projects, which reflects the
change in women's social role in contemporary society. Above all, the narratives presented
corroborate the importance of caring for people in psychological distress and reaffirm the
Hannah Arendt assumption on active life, namely, human action becomes meaningless if it is
not directed to any embodiment.
