Abstract
The author presents a critical and polemic essay bearing on the organization of psychiatric services based on catchment areas. Several negative consequences are discussed: the loss of initial goals related to community psychiatry, the adoption of a major first-line role for psychiatrists and the identification of psychiatrists to the treatment of chronic and severe psychiatric disorders. Catchment area psychiatrists and psychiatric teams frequently function in a unique manner within the medical profession, and their spreading throughout the community leads to the development of closed subcultures often characterized by resistance to change and a lack of academic motivation. Catchment area psychiatry is also described as generating crisis after crisis and as detrimental to the positive evolution of former mental hospitals.