[The sector and the 30 June 1838 law]

The two current foundations of the French organization of mental health, administratively speaking, are sectorisation and, on the legal side, the law of 30 june 1838. A historical study of the principles which led to the promulgation of these texts, shows that these two foundations are opposed, in fact, by the theories which support them. The law of 1838 stipulated the creation of asylums with a view not only to protecting society but also to protecting the patients from an environment which was incompatible with their recovery. History has proved that these asylums have in fact become places of exclusion. From this statement the necessity of diversification of the structure of psychiatric care and the development of organisations outside the hospital, has become apparent. The policy of sectorisation is to develop the whole of these means, preserving the insertion of the mentally sick patient into his usual social and family environment. With the contradiction which emerges from the existence of a law recognising only internment prefaced by a sanitary policy which extols the preeminence of care outside the hospital, a certain number of difficulties and distorsions between theory and practice can be expected.