Introduction:

The Psychosocial Care Center (CAPS) is a service guided by the principles of psychiatric reform, which offers care to people with mental disorders or problems related to the use of alcohol/drugs, which needs constant evaluation. The objective was to analyze scientific production about working conditions and the quality of the service provided at CAPS.

Method:

An integrative literature review was carried out, selecting articles published in SciELO, BVS-Saúde, and PubMed, using pre-defined criteria.

Results:

34 articles were analyzed. Studies published in public health journals prevailed, depicting qualitative research. They signal the quality of the CAPS service, its potential for social inclusion of users, deficits in the implementation of some practices of psychiatric reform (actions of territory, harm reduction, matrix support), interpersonal problems between professionals and managers, lack of material resources and fragility of the professionals’ employment relationship.

Discussion:

Despite the long anti-asylum struggle, there is budgetary, structural and training and communication problems among professionals that compromise mental health care.

Conclusion:

CAPS is an essential service for users, but it has operational problems, especially in service, working conditions and link between care networks, requiring service reorganization and professional training.

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