[Alzheimer's disease: cerebral illness or the illness of the mind?].

The use of considering Alzheimer's disease as a "primary degenerative dementia" prevails and the disease is thus considered of purely cerebral origin without taking into account the possible effects of the minds of subjects designated Alzheimer sufferers and/or the communicational and relational disorders which may develop between the patient and others. This perspective, which considers the totality of the dementia as a biological phenomenon while overlooking the fact that the human being is also a being of language appears like an act of iatrogenic censure. A consequence of the fear of death so present in our thanatophobic culture, it is related to negation of the elderly subject, too patently mortal, to be recognized and accepted as similar to us.

[Unemployment stress and mental illness].

In order to avoid pathological effects of stress upon mental health, it's possible to try to adapt the context to the person or, on the contrary, the person to the context. Improvement of life conditions or pain psychiatrisation, here there is a fundamental ideological choice. For the author, concerning unemployment stress bound to the actual economic crisis, this choice inclines clearly and dangerously in favour of psychiatrisation of troubles presented by unemployed persons.

[Mother-child relationship: the kangaroo syndrome].

The author describes among some adults a special clinical form of mother-child relation in which bond between both partners, without being fusional, remains very strong and can be likened with the larva relation among marsupials. He calls to mind the hard therapeutic problems given by persistency at adult age of this complementary type relation.

[Psychiatry in the suburbs and suburbs of psychiatry].

A psychiatric service near Paris has opened two mobile units with the help and the support of local governments. The authors review their first year's activities involving preliminary consultation with patients without, in the first instance, prescribing treatment or giving any formal diagnosis. The team's action is resolutely preventive.

[From social distress to psychic pain].

Regarding 75 subjects of both sex sent to psychiatric and alcological consultations by social departments to which they required some help, the authors ask the question about limits between social alienation and mental alienation for people in precarity and poverty position. They inquire into role part and position of the psychiatrist beside them.