First initiatives for social integration of the mentally ill in one phase of pre-deinstitutionalization. The example of Saint-Jean-de-Dieu, 1910-1950

This article on the first initiatives of social integration of the mentally ill, using the example of the H?pital St-Jean-de-Dieu, explores the implementation of a period of deinstitutionalization in the early decades of the 20th century. Our study is situated in the recent historiography that offers a rereading of the period just prior to the Quiet Revolution in Quebec. We intend to contribute by demonstrating that the policies, strategies and practices of the Sisters of Providence and the psychiatrists of St-Jean-de-Dieu developed a system of deinstitutionalization that reintegrated patients into their family as early as the 1910s, half a century before the first wave of deinstitutionalization of the 1960s was orchestrated by the authors of the Bédard report.