The Psychiatric Nursing Graduate Program of the University of São Paulo at Ribeirão Preto - Ribeirão Preto College of Nursing (EERP/USP) - has developed its activities since 1975. It was the third Brazilian graduate program, the first program in this specialty and the only offered in Brazil. 

Initially, it mainly met the educational needs of faculty members of Brazilian nursing schools, especially those from the EERP-USP, and only in the late 1970s, it focused on issues related to the Psychiatric Nursing field. With the master’s new curricular structure proposed in 1990, the Program defined its lines of research to adapt to the trends of research emerging in the mental health field and to the interests of its professors and graduate students, and in the 1980s and 1990s sought to qualify its faculty members.

The Doctoral program was initiated in 1999 and since 2002, it has a multidisciplinary focus. The program theoretical foundation lies on the understanding that human beings are a product of the interaction of individuals’ biological and psychological endowment with the physical and social environment. Mental health is the “conducting wire” in the program’s dimension in which it focuses on the individual, family and community.