[Day care hospital in psychiatry: diversity or specificity?]

Day Care Hospitals represent efficient structures for the treatment of various psychatric disorders through a large variety of medical care. In the litterature, multiple terms are used to define the various models of Day Care Hospitals, according to their use, their orientation and their therapeutic programmes. Our aim in this study is to compare, through a search on "Medline", the various existing models of Day Care Hospitals in France and in Belgium. Thereafter, the "specific" model which exists at the Centre Hospitalier du Luxembourg will be described. Two main types of Day Care Hospitals are described in the litterature: the "classical" type, with mainly a support fuction, resides on the downstream side of hospitalisation and the "specific" type, with a care function for a short duration, resides on its upstream side. The model developed at the Centre Hospitalier du Luxembourg is upstream the hospital. From our study, it is concluded that, rather of being an inconvenience, the large number of existing Day Care Hospitals, which differ by various specificities, represent excellent complementary opportunities for the current care of mental diseases.