[Evaluation of services for the chronic mentally ill in a community mental health centre.]

The community mental health center " Centre de santé mentale communautaire (CSMC) ", while opening in a sector previously deprived of psychiatric services, started to repatriate patients whose treatment was until then assured by a psychiatric hospital with an asylum vocation. It was also suggested to undergo an evaluation program of the care delivered at the CSMC and to verify its therapeutic impact in praticular, on the portion of this clientele demonstrating signs of chronicity. Such evaluation appeared useful to define more precisely certain types of intervention that could at the same time respond to the specific needs of this clientele without undermining energies of caregivers.