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Départements became an essential feature of French psychiatry in the law dated June 30, 1838. This lasted until 1985, when they finally lost all financial power with regard to psychiatric services. The 1838 lawmakers decided on a great reform but let the départements fund it, so that these services were under two different powers that did not fit together easily. Contrary to what is sometimes said, the 1838 law did not require each département to build an asylum. In order to avoid too large a number of commitments, each département was given specific financial capabilities: it was allowed to decide what amount of hospital costs would be paid by the communes, and to choose the amount of money to be spent on “non-dangerous insane paupers.” The details of the budget of the asylums were also set by the départements, which was not the case for any other type of hospital. The consequences of this organization were serious. At least until 1945, people who were identified as needing to be committed were denied admission for want of public funding. Even today, one can see that public psychiatric services were underfunded for a very long time and greatly differ from one département to another.