The Social Integration of the Mentally Ill in Quebec Prior to the Bédard Report of 1962

This article on the first initiatives of social integration of the mentally ill, using the example of Saint-Jean-de-Dieu Hospital, explores the implementation of dehopsitalization (the transition between hospital and community care) in the early decades of the 20th century. Our study is part of the recent historiographical stream that offers are interpretation of the period just prior to the Quiet Revolution inQuebec. We aim to contribute to this research by showing that the policies, strategies, and practices of the Sisters of Providence and the psychiatrists of Saint-Jean-de-Dieu already comprised a deinstitutionalization system that was reintegrating patients into their families as early as the 1910s—half a century before the first wave of deinstitutionalization of the 1960s was orchestrated by the authors of theBédard Report.