Após 10 years of the validity of Law No 10.216/2001 on the protection and rights of persons in mental suffering and on the reshaping of the care model in mental health, the advances in mental health in Brazil are undeniable. A number of substitute services and new health devices have been created reflecting the principles of psychiatric reform, driving new ways of dealing with laucuracy, delivering on old demands of the Anti-manicomial Movement. This movement, as a vocalisation of pain and contradictions in order to guarantee the citizenship of captives of society, claimed for state action in this area, demanding that the human rights of people in mental suffering be universally guaranteed in an indivisible and interdependent manner. That guarantee implies both the recognition of the person in mental suffering and a person subject to the law, as well as the understanding of the right to enjoy all rights, not only the right to health. This article discusses the potential and limits of legal action in the field of mental health. This discussion stems from the recognition of the uniqueness that mental suffering imparts to the individual, bringing together the differences between the subjects. Because of the nature of the diagnosis or the contextualisation of the process of suffering in an area that reverses to emotions and family, social and community relations, the fact that that specific city is concerned requires much more than recognition of the rights of those individuals: it is pushing for further progress in public mental health policies from a human rights perspective.