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Fouquet is a French psychiatrist and a member of a French commission formed to revise the laws of France affecting psychiatry. He was sent to the United States by the French Ministry of Health to study our methods.
In this paper he gives a brief historical review of French psychiatry. He points out that until the end of the nineteenth century, French psychiatrists—though prominent in their field—were mainly of the descriptive school. At the beginning of the twentieth century French psychiatry began to decline and remained far behind that of Germany. Nevertheless, in this period Binet formulated the first intelligence tests, and Toulouse established the first attempts at mental hygiene. At the present time French psychiatry still tends to remain essentially somatic in its orientation.
The problems confronting the French are very similar to those in this country: there are too few psychiatric hospitals, there is a tremendous increase in juvenile delinquency, etc.
The French differ from us in the care of their psychiatric patients in one important respect: their psychiatric hospitals are organized in small units, each having a medical director assisted by residents. The patients are placed according to the intensity of their disturbance and are housed in small units arranged like a town rather than a hospital.