Occupational psychiatry is the field of psychiatry that focuses on work, its importance in the lives of individuals and work organizations. It gained visibility in the 2000 decade, after the creation of the Academy of Occupational and Organizational Psychiatry. Following that trend, occupational psychiatry outpatient started in 2008 at Hospital de Santa Maria.

To describe the structure and functioning of that project; to characterize the population that has been referred to this subspecialty, as well as the main motives for referral; and to highlight some paradigmatic cases that deserve special attention.

Call attention to the importance of occupational psychiatry at the individual and institutional level.

All the patients ever referred to the occupational psychiatry consultation were considered for the analysis. Clinical information was obtained through medical records and interviews with the patients. Bibliographic research was conducted through the PubMed in the Medline library.

In our hospital, the prototype patient referred to occupational psychiatry is a middle-aged woman working as a medical assistant. The most frequent motives for referral were related to difficulties in accomplishing job duties and definite psychiatric diagnosis corresponded more often to the common mental disorders (anxiety, depression and adjustment disorders). At the institutional level, the initiative was received with great enthusiasm.

As Freud stated “To Love and work are the cornerstone of our humanness”, in line with that we consider that occupational psychiatry should be taken as a priority in what concerns to mental health policies.

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.