AN EVALUATION OF DAY CENTRE CARE by

I N the last four years the mental health services in Dublin have been evolving in I~. the general direction of community care. Dublin City and County is divided into seven district catchment areas, each with its own psychiatric team and facilities at varying stages of development. It is the aim that in time as the area and supportive psychiatric services are developed the large mental hospitals will be I reduced in size and also planned that each area will have a range of services so that many patients attending psychiatric hospitals are catered for in a community setting. The objective is that each district shall form a self-contained administrative unit with its own team providing a comprehensive mental health service for adults, adolescents and children, both acute and chronic. Elsewhere new forms of therapeutic intervention have been developing many of which do not require treatment on an in-patient basis, being more effective in a community setting where the problem is actually taking place. There are the acute disturbances which give rise to crisis within a family, marital conflict, acute grief problems, attempted suicide etc. States such as the neuroses and personality dis-orders both of which require a period of active treatment- family, individual