Considering that one in nine Canadians hospitalized for mental illness returns to emergency within one month after leaving hospital, we are interested in documenting, from a socio-historical perspective, the “trans-institutional” itineraries of people suffering from psychiatric disorders. We are proposing here a research note from the study that we are conducting on the evolution of mental health care services specifically for Francophone communities in Eastern and Northern Ontario, as well as for an Anglophone community in western Quebec. These comparisons between French-speaking regions of Ontario and Anglophones in Montreal will contribute to a better understanding of the impact that factors of « language service » and « culture » have on the mental health of Francophone minority communities.