[Social and preventive medicine developments in the next 15 years]

At the present instant we are evolving in the withdrawing of a lot of traditions. Alas one shouldn't live in the illusion that probably nothing will basically change nor be suspicious of either mass-media histrionics or political opportunism towards fashion phenomena; these will probably be the caricatured reflections of what shall perhaps become our society. They will however refer to their futility in the form of the wave which will mark an evolution we shall try to anticipate. In some degree it will allow to stimulate the thought or to modify structure of our medical institutions or our patients, the social and preventive technics that risk to begin won't be simple improvements of what we have now, but they'll open a qualitative universe and extremely different from those, that were born in the 19th century. This study should above all permit us to understand that our rapport with another reality perhaps, or perhaps a new way of life, 'culture' in the broadest sense, will be upset or simply brought into question. Here we see the importance that will be played by social and preventive medicine and evidently social and preventive psychiatry in the year 2000.