In Portugal, the National Mental Health Plan sought to reform the mental health care system, decentralizing mental health care by promoting community based services. Guidelines point to treatment of Psychotic Disorders with collaborative, person directed and individualized approaches.

The authors propose to describe the development of a new psychosocial rehabilitation unit in a recently created psychiatric department.

The CHEDV's psychiatry department (2009) serves a population of around 340,000. The Psychosocial Rehabilitation Unit (2015) aims to ensure a multidisciplinary and integrated response to users with major psychiatric disorders. The Psychosocial Rehabilitation Unit structures 4 axes of response: detection and initial approach of the disease, intervention in crisis, psychosocial rehabilitation and management of difficult patients.

CHEDV's psychosocial rehabilitation unit is responsible for the care of about 25 patients daily. Treatment activities range from specialized consultations, home visits, medication management and crisis telephone to social skills training, psycho-education, neurocognitive rehabilitation, occupational workshops and social intervention/orientation. The unit bases its work on constant communication within the team but also with all other carers of the patient (in or out of hospital).

Bringing to the population a set of previously unavailable responses is the most blatant success of this unit that is helping people getting a better and closer care. To improve our work we aim at integrating the quantitative and qualitative psychometric evaluation of the patients. The lack of resources, necessity of further training, insufficient funding, and low political priority remain as the main barriers to community based mental health care.

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.