Las personas que padecen enfermedades mentales han sido históricamente invisibilizadas y marginadas del ejercicio de sus derechos. El modelo de atención en salud ha sometido a éstos sujetos a procesos de internación sin tomar en cuenta su voluntad, concibiéndolos como objetos de tutela y protección, negándoles la capacidad de tomar decisiones y de insertarse en su comunidad. Los largos períodos de hospitalización acarrean la ruptura de sus lazos sociales, la estigmatización y la exclusión social, y paradójicamente, favorecen la discapacidad y la restricción de los derechos de los pacientes. Palabras clave Exclusión social, Rehabilitación, Desmanicomialización Abstract AN APPROACH TO THE PROBLEM OF SOCIAL EXCLUSION IN MENTAL HEALTH CARE People with mental illness have historically been invisible and marginalized exercise their rights. The model of health care has gone through these subject to processes of admission regardless of their will, conceiving them as objects of care and protection, denying them the ability to make decisions and to insert in their community. Long periods of hospitalization entail the breaking of social ties, stigmatization and social exclusion, paradoxically, promote disability and restriction of the rights of patients. While the State and various civil society organizations, drive a process of reform of the mental health system, the changes that are to require complex sociocultural changes, so that the community devices, along with the necessary support, facilitate a person who has suffered a decompensation in mental health can carry on your life as all others. In this paper we analyze phenomena related to social exclusion of people with mental illness, investigating what legitimizes certain discursive configurations of exclusion and symbolic artefacts through which reinforcing. Methodologically adhere to the phenomenological currents. Key words Social exclusion, Rehabilitation, Deinstitutionalization