[Localization of emergency psychiatric services in Montréal.]

The validity of using a <> criterion as the organizing principle for the provision of emergency psychiatric services is examined both from the standpoint of the scientific literature on the subject and through a quantitative analysis of Montreal - based data. Given the lack of agreement as to the relative importance of distance between the consumer and the supply of services, the analysis attempts to test two hypotheses : 1) that there is a spatially structured response to the supply of emergency psychiatric services provided by Montreal hospitals and 2) the geographical distribution of the users of these services is linked to three variables of which the most important is the spatial distance between the patient and the closest emergency services. The study tends to confirm both hypotheses.