[Deinstitutionalization of psychiatric care: the post-war process in developed countries]

The authors pay their attention to the transformation of the psychiatric care which has formed in many industrial countries after the second world war. It concerns namely the deinstitutionalization process together with a development of the community psychiatric care, or the reduction process of the psychiatric bed number simultaneously with a spread of the community mental health facilities. The authors follow these changes namely in Great Britain, USA and Italy. They also discuss some theoretical problems (functions of the community psychiatry, model programs) and compare the positive and negative influences of the changes mentioned above on the society.