[Mental health policies and the transfer of services to the community].

In this article, the mental health policy is viewed as a pivotal element of the "psychiatric services" reform which began in Québec in the seventies. The authors advance the hypothesis that the community approach has played a fundamental role in developing the reform and that it has itself undergone deep changes. As a result, the policy's and the reform's effects are discussed from two angles, namely that of the communitization of services and that of the direction taken by the community approach during the reform process.