In the name of progress

Anne-Laure Simonnot



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In the name of progress
l'Information Psychiatrique. Volume 79, Number 2, 115-8, Février 2003, LE LIT ET LE DIVAN
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Author(s) : Anne-Laure Simonnot
Summary : While the proposals contained in the report written by E. Piel and J.L. Roelandt in 2001 may be fashionable, they are by no means innovative\; indeed such ambitions had already been voiced by hygienist psychiatrists in the first half of the 20 ^th century. More recently, since the 1980s, our discipline has undergone certain transformations. One model is becoming more and more widespread a medical objectivism which, in emphazising effectiveness and immediate results, ends up abandoning that category of the hospital population which resists intensive care. In line with the current trend of a return to realism, consensus and profitability, psychiatry can once more proclaim its alignment with somatic medicine and devote itself to the treatment of a social malaise.
Keywords : degeneration, Edouard Toulouse, hygienism, mental health, hospitalization.