[The place of SSRIs in the treatment of schizophrenia].

One of the major clinical challenges in the treatment of schizophrenia is the treatment of negative symptoms, which are particularly associated with poor long-term outcome. Clozapine is often effective in the treatment of a great proportion of previously neuroleptic refractory patients. Its utility is, however, limited by the high risk of agranulocytosis.

[A care model adapted to brief psychiatric hospitalizations].

Practice of psychiatric hospitalization has considerably changed: deinstitutionnalization, brief hospitalizations, opened units, partnership with patients and complementarity with community mental health services. These changes appear simultaneously in most of industrialized countries. They are the result of social changes, evolution of mental health care, and a sharper perception of deinsertion risks through long term hospitalizations.

[Antidepressants and somatic disease].

Depression is the most frequent psychiatric disease associated with chronic somatic disorders. Diagnosis, however, is frequently difficult to make, due on one hand to the presence of symptoms that depression and chronic somatic disorders have in common, and on the other hand to the assumption shared by the physician and its patient that depression is a normal reaction to a somatic illness. Accurate diagnosis is nevertheless necessary in order to initiate the appropriate treatment.