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In 1994, one of the authors (SK) created a psychiatric emergency mobile team working 24 hours a day and seven days a week—ÉRIC (Équipe Rapide d’Intervention de Crise)—, with a focus on avoiding psychiatric hospitalization, including patients’ relatives (family and close social circle), in coordination with general emergency services (Samu), help and assistance services (firemen) and GPs, as well as the police. Sectorized throughout an area of south Yvelines with 150,000 inhabitants and further widened over the following years, this team—at first experimental, then permanently established—is still operating almost twenty-five years later. When it was created, and for many years, it was much criticized by many psychiatrists in France but welcomed by the families concerned. At the time of creation, and many years later, this team was quite unique in France. Today, in 2018, there are many established mobile psychiatric teams in this country—although very few focus on emergency and permanent organization—, and many similar teams also exist in a lot of foreign countries. That is why it appeared interesting to the authors—given the opportunity provided by the tenth national congress of mobile psychiatric teams—to lay out a brief overview of what exists in France and in foreign countries and to think of the evolution of ideas, practices, and mental health services in psychiatry on the basis of their foundations, as well as the factors influencing—to a greater or lesser extent—the development of mobile psychiatric teams in France or in other nations.