Background: Brief therapy centers (BTCs) are outpatient mental health units based initially on a psychodynamic model of crisis intervention, and evolving later into a global care approach. The main objective of BTC is to provide mentally ill patients with a viable alternative to hospitalization.

Methods: We undertook a retrospective study of 323 patients admitted to a BTC in Geneva in order to understand the evolution of our patients care over the changes in psychiatry over the last 2 decades. To this end, we considered predictive factors of relapse for 160 individuals with repeated “revolving door” admissions compared to 163 patients with a single admission to the BTC. To analyze data, we mainly use analysis of variance and logistic regression with SPSS software.

Results: Living alone, lower socio-educational levels, unstable working conditions, crisis factor of professional trouble, and preexisting psychiatric conditions, such as depression, bipolar disorders, psychotic disorders or borderline personality disorder, that required multiple social and systemic interventions, and medical treatments (such as antipsychotics and mood stabilizers) increase probability that patients relapse and require multiple BTC admissions.

Conclusions: The results of the present study that are considered as preliminary, support the development of ambulatory mental health units that attempt to adapt their intervention practices to different populations in order to prevent the revolving door phenomenon and therefore contribute to improve the global system of mental health.