By means of a certain number of social issues relating to intervention in mental health, the author has elaborated a framework for analyzing the links between individual change and social change. These issues - the proliferation in the number of interventions, the social and ideological functions of the agents of intervention, professionalization, the market relationship, alternatives, and social classes - when applied to a work of critical analysis in mental health, Psychothérapies, attention1., permit us to isolate a social model of mental health/illness. In this model a predominantly social aetiology of mental health/ illness requires of necessity a type of intervention which is directed both at the individual and his environment. The author questions the applicability of such a model by proposing three working hypotheses on individual responsibility versus social responsibility in relation to mental health problems, on the links between theory and practice in mental health, and on the distinction between immediate and intermediary causes of mental health/illness.