[Pharmaco- and psychotherapy in psychiatric ambulatory care]

Our report describes the evolution of the outpatients' psychiatry in Lausanne. Here is mentioned the constant increase of consultations for new and former cases, and it is statistically shown that this augmentation is not only the result of the increasing population in the "Vaud District" (Canton de Vaud) but rather the consequence of the increasing number of patients with deeper investigations and treatments. It is true that the psychotherapeutic training was the most important in our outpatients' department, but the coming of psychotropic drugs has changed the treatment in certain cases and has developed mixed treatments. The creation of the Psycho-Social Center in the Psychiatric outpatients' department was the beginning of the social action in the institution, with the creation of an emergency department, consultations at the patients' home and treatment made by a team including doctors-outpatients' nurses-social assistants. We have checked that for many outpatients, very often in hard or psycho-reactive situations, there was no opposition between pharmaco-therapy or psychotherapy. So pharmaco-therapy and psychotherapy are often used separately or together in the outpatients' department through individual analytic psychotherapies, group or brief psychotherapies, relaxation, emergency treatments with perfusion of psychotropic and neuroleptic drugs.