[Associations: models or crutches for local psychiatry]

From time immemorial, psychiatry has been the focus of a number of associations. Starting out as charities on the bangs of asylum care, after the war they became a force for innovation and the forerunners of sector policy. After taking the medical-social turn in the 1970s, they spread out across the country in disparate fashion, providing local, low-capacity facilities that put patients' families at the forefront. With the post-1968 critique of institutions and the patriarchal system, followed by the AIDS years and the model of militant patients, the role of users became paramount. The proliferation of young peer-helper associations pursuing targeted partial objectives and relieving public authorities of their duty to assist is proof of this.