Odier, Bernard <br/><br/>
The Odyssey of mental health centers (centres médico-psychologiques, CMPs): Thinking about the future 

 -  2016.<br/>							 
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<br/><br/> The distinctive features of child and juvenile Mental Health Centers (CMPs, centres médico-psychologiques) are described and discussed: their specialization, their mission, their geographical distribution, and their role as an integral part of the psychiatric sectors. We describe their main operating characteristics: location, accessibility (low threshold access), availability, and a graduated, personalized, and multidisciplinary response. Similarities and differences with psychiatry in the city, outpatient care, medical facilities, and health centers are discussed. We indicate the equipment available at a local level, facilities and staff (staff numbers, training and personnel quality), and standards, where they exist. The activities and the question of how it is to be described then brings us to problems of budgeting and financing. We explain recent developments (receptions and specialized hotlines, the role of the mobile consultant, the delegation of tasks). Recent clinical developments (perinatal care, expanded clinical evaluation, specializations) are also highlighted. Future paths (city area networks, partnerships with the medico-social and social sector, etc.) are explored. The value of theorizing these sites as a “diffuse institutional setting” is mentioned. The remaining problems—free access, versatility or over-specialization, integration with child and adolescent psychiatry, community psychiatry, local mental health boards, and access for new populations (those afflicted by precarity, the elderly, the mentally disabled, the chronically ill and those at the end of their life)—are situated, and solutions for the future are outlined.