As the psychopathological constructs have been influenced by scientific and cultural paradigms of its time, culture reflects and determines the way of understanding health and disease. The knowledge generated is integrated to the cultural wealth and it continues its development by interacting with culture, thus the ideas of mental illness and its treatment vary according to culture and beliefs of a given population in a given time.

To propose a framework for analysis through the examination of cultural products. We argue that this strategy can give us some clues about how the general population understands mental illness and the psychiatric work.

A review of the literature available about social representations of science, medicine, illness and psychiatry, through cultural products analysis.

There are many works that address the presence of these issues in the social imaginary by analyzing cultural products. In the field of psychiatry, the analysis of films, literature and music (the last, in a lesser extent) are the most frequent.

The analysis of cultural products can be a source of additional knowledge that connects us with the social representations of our profession and its scope of practice, favoring a better understanding about what psychiatry and mental illness means for our patients and general population.

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.