title: [Chronic mental patients cared for in a general hospital].
abstract: The author communicates his thoughts about an activity in a medico-psychological service of a sector of 25,000 habitants in the french-speaking Jura. Shocked by the alienating effect of the traditional, asylum-like psychiatric hospital, the author and chief of the service, hospitalized the acute cases, which could not be treated in an out-patient way, in the general hospital of the district. He integrated them in the medical service, refusing to create a psychiatric division which would be a new segregation. He describes further, the integrative activity of the psychiatrist with the nurses through discussion groups; the astonishing evolution of attitudes of both the practitioners and other patients toward psychological disorders; the development of mentally ill patients, who abandon the stereotyped behaviour of the asylum dependent regression; and, the development of their close environment, which is no more resigned to the fatality of the mentally ill's destiny. The author ends with the question if the integration of psychological patients in acute crisis in a general hospital could be a barrier against risks of chronification.
mesh_terms: D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D001294:Attitude to Health; D002908:Chronic Disease; D006769:Hospitals, General; D006801:Humans; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000628:therapy*; D013557:Switzerland; D013808:Therapeutic Community
vernacular_title: Le malade mental chronique soigné à l'hôpital général.