Deinstitutionalization is often described as an organizational shift of moving care from the psychiatric hospital towards the community. This paper analyses deinstitutionalization as a daily care practice by adopting an empirical ethics approach instead. Deinstitutionalization of mental healthcare is seen as an important way of improving the quality of lives of people suffering from severe mental illness. But how is this done in practice and which different goods are strived for by those involved? We examine these questions by giving an ethnographic description of community mental health care in Trieste, a city that underwent a radical process of deinstitutionalization in the 1970s. We show that paying attention to the spatial metaphors used in daily care direct us to different notions of good care in which relationships are central. Addressing the question of how daily care practices of mental healthcare outside the hospital may be constituted and the importance of spatial metaphors used may inform other practices that want to shape community mental health care.

去机构化通常被描述为从精神病医院向社区转移护理的组织转变。本文通过采用经验伦理学方法，将去机构化作为日常护理实践进行了分析。精神保健的非机构化被认为是改善患有严重精神疾病的人的生活质量的重要途径。但是，这在实践中是如何完成的，相关人员力争使用哪种商品？我们以人种志描述了的里雅斯特（Trieste）的社区精神卫生保健，从而研究了这些问题。这个城市在1970年代经历了非机构化的根本过程。我们表明，注意日常护理中使用的空间隐喻会将我们引向以关系为中心的良好护理的不同概念。