["Parapsychiatry". Psychiatric paramedics: their roles, their limits...the risk of malpractice]

This paper presents an overview of the role of paramedical workers and psychologists in psychiatry. The authors analyse their sometimes uncomfortable situation within the framework of the psychiatric unit of a general hospital. In the first part, the fundamental importance of the paramedical worker is underlined, focussing on the particularity of the management of mental disorders. The limits to the field of action of the nursing staff, the psychologist, the social worker or the ergotherapist, are also discussed. In the second part, the authors denounce the dangerous alternative approaches which sometimes tempt those paramedical workers. The negative repercussions that they inevitably create, both in the functioning of the unit and in the therapeutical objective, are developed. The competition between physicians and non-physicians in psychiatry is betraying the patient.