18

Psychiatry and general medicine developed independently (due to a “silo mentality”) in France before embarking on a recent period of co-operation or bridge-building in response to increased demand in conjunction with demographic decline in both specialties.This article describes how care is organized at four population levels, in order to help contextualize local initiatives and projects for improving co-operation between general medicine and psychiatry.It also describes the forms of co-operation between generalists and psychiatrists implemented both abroad and in France.The “Regional Health Professional Communities” (communautés professionnelles territoriales de santé, CPTS) proposed by the 2016 Act to Modernize the French Health System were designed to encourage co-operation between private and public health care professionals, between primary and secondary care, and between health and social care institutions across a health region (100 to 20,000 inhabitants).Community psychiatric services, threatened with shrinking patient numbers due to disorders requiring hospital care, in some cases under involuntary commitment, see the CPTS as new partners and a potential source of new patients, strengthening their mission to provide preventive and public health care.