Objective: to analyze the training of nurses from public and private educational institutions of the city of São Paulo from the perspective of the Brazilian Psychiatric Reform. Methods: a qualitative, descriptive-exploratory research, using as methodological framework documentary analysis of the pedagogical projects of the participating institutions and content analysis of the interviews carried out with mental health professors. Results: it was identified that most mental health courses had insufficient workload for adequate training; theory emphasized the study of mental disorders and drug treatment; practice, in some schools, was carried out in psychiatric hospitals. There were problems that interfered with the quality of the education offered. Final considerations: educational institutions still did not offer training in undergraduate nursing from the perspective of the Brazilian Psychiatric Reform.

This study aims to analyze the training of nurses from public and private educational institutions in the city of São Paulo considering the changes proposed by the National Mental Health Policy and the Brazilian Psychiatric Reform. Research with a qualitative, descriptive-exploratory approach, using the methodological framework of document and content analysis. Interviews were carried out with the professors responsible for the Mental Health disciplines and the documentary analysis of the Political-Pedagogical Projects that guide the researched nursing courses was elaborated. Problems were identified that interfere with the quality of the education offered, mainly with regard to the practices of internships in substitute services, of which the disarticulation and inadequate functioning of the mental health care network stand out; the deficiency in the number of services to meet the demand of the population and schools. In addition, there are difficulties in contracting with health management to establish the fields of practice due to the outsourcing of the sector and in the association of the given theory, in the classroom, with the practices developed in the assistance units. It was noticed that educational institutions did not offer training in undergraduate nursing in line with the changes proposed by the National Mental Health Policy and the assumptions of Psychiatric Reform.