Psychic disability

Psychic handicap is a French particularity; this appellation is only known in French-speaking countries. Elsewhere, we do not clearly distinguish intellectual disability from psychic disability.This recent concept is the subject of debate: are we talking about the consequences of mental illness (therefore the domain of psychiatry) or those of thought disorders (therefore the domain of psychology)? Most of the time, it is psychiatry that uses this concept to address the social inclusion of people under psychotropic treatment. In France, we are aware of cases in which people have a social recognition of a person with a disability of psychic origin (PESHOP) without the need for any medical diagnosis (mutual aid group, residence reception). We therefore consider mental disability from a different angle than medical and we give a definition of it. We also propose a diagnostic tool (GESHOP) for this particular disability situation that can be used even by uninformed people.