Organizational analysis of deinstitutionalization in a psychiatric hospital

50 ans de service public pour les politiques et l’organisation des services de psychiatrie communautaire au Québec

Cet essai, rédigé en deux articles compagnons (Partie I & II), est destiné mettre en valeur le service public de psychiatres du Département de psychiatrie de l’Université de Montréal ayant oeuvré au niveau du ministère de la Santé et des Services sociaux (MSSS) pour les politiques de désinstitutionnalisation et l’organisation des services de psychiatrie communautaire pour les personnes avec des troubles mentaux graves. Il s’agit des Drs Camille Laurin, Denis Lazure, Arthur Amyot, Luc Blanchet et André Delorme.

Dans cette seconde partie, la période 2003-2015 sera couverte. Elle marque la fin du Comité de la santé mentale du Québec (1971-2003), et ses travaux féconds interdisciplinaires. 2003, c’est l’entrée au ministère du Dr André Delorme qui y détient sans doute un des records de longévité, servant depuis 2003 à la Direction de la santé mentale transférée sous la nouvelle Direction des affaires médicales et universitaires du MSSS également créée en 2003.

Cette phase voit l’émergence depuis le modèle de psychiatrie communautaire d’une approche différentiée, les cliniques spécialisées ou l’approche par programme-clientèle. Mais ce dernier modèle ne dispose pas des ressources nécessaires pour s’étendre et éviter des difficultés d’accès. L’essai conclut avec une discussion sur l’impact de la toute nouvelle gouvernance du système de la santé et des services sociaux du Québec, la loi 10. En simplifiant le système de santé en deux lignes (soins primaires dans les bureaux des médecins de famille, avec soutien infirmier et social ; soins spécialisés par le personnel des centres intégrés de santé et de services sociaux [CISSS]), il sera soutenu qu’il y a des opportunités pour un financement plus équitable et un système plus équilibré de santé mentale au Québec.

Regionalised Tertiary Psychiatric Residential Facilities

Aims– Psychiatric hospitals remain the main venue for long-term mental health care and, despite widespread closures and downsizing, no country that built asylums in the last century has done away with them entirely – with the recent exception of Italy. Differentiated community-based residential alternatives have been developed over the past decades, with staffing levels that range from full-time professional, to daytime only, to part-time/on-call.Methods– This paper reviews the characteristics of community-based psychiatric residential care facilities as an alternative to long-term care in psychiatric hospitals. It describes five factors decision makers should consider: 1. number of residential places needed; 2. staffing levels; 3. physical setting; 4. programming; and 5. governance and financing.Results– In Italy, facilities with full-time professional staff have been developed since the mid-1990s to accommodate the last cohorts of patients discharged from psychiatric hospitals. In the United Kingdom, experiments withhostel wardssince the 1980s have shown that home-like, small-scale facilities with intensive treatment and rehabilitation programming can be effective for the most difficult-to-place patients. More recently in Australia,Community Care Units(CCUs) have been applying this concept. In the Canadian province of British Columbia (BC),Tertiary Psychiatric Residential Facilities (TPRFs)have been developed as part of an effort to regionalise health and social services and downsize and ultimately close its only psychiatric hospital.Conclusions– This type of service must be further developed in addition to the need for forensic, acute-care and intermediate-level beds, as well as for community-based care such as assertive community treatment and intensive case management. All these types of services, together with long-term community-based residential care, constitute the elements of a balanced mental health care system. As part of a region's balanced mental health care plan, these Tertiary Psychiatric Care Facilities have the potential to act as hubs of expertise not only for treatment, rehabilitation, community integration and ser-vice co-ordination for the severely mentally ill, but also for research and training.

Declaration of Interest: None.

Mental Health Reform, Economic Globalization and the Practice of Citizenship

Drawing on research conducted in British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec it is argued that tension exists between mental health reforms born out of concern for the well-being and care of people and those that are being driven by cost-containment and efficiency. Contributing to this tension are competing discourses about mental health and mental illness. It is argued that progressive change requires the meaningful engagement of mental health care recipients in policy decision-making processes and ongoing analysis about the interconnections between economic globalization, social welfare state restructuring and mental health reform.