Abstract

Centres for Psychosocial Attention (CPAs) were created with the purpose of treating people with mental disorders, while integrating them into their communities, fitting, therefore, into the outpatient model, instead of the asylum one. Because of the communitarian aspect of CPAs, we believe that philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre could provide us with interesting tools to consider the ethical role played, even if just in theory, by these Centres, not only through the standpoint of its users and their insertions into their families and community life, but also considering the advantages for other community members that could come of this integration. In light of this, the purpose of this paper is to verify, employing MacIntyre’s notions of ‘practice’ and ‘human flourishing’, a) if CPAs can contribute in any way to ethical development (i.e., development of virtues); b) how CPAs’ users can benefit from their insertion into communities; and c) how to evaluate the advantages for the flourishing of other community members in integrating people coming from these Centres. In the end, we will argue that this institution is of paramount importance for the community’s and its members’ flourishing.