Correcting Misconceptions in Mental Health Policy: Strategies for Improved Care of the Seriously Mentally Ill

Peter Scott's (1975) characterisation of the concept of dangerousness as potentially dangerous in itself could not be more relevant than today. The principal focus of mental health policy over the last six years has been the care and treatment of seriously mentally ill people and mentally disordered offenders, and central to the successful care of the former and many of the latter is the competent assessment of the risk they pose: mostly to themselves, but occasionally to others.

Download Full-text

When health means illness: analysing mental health discourses and practices in Ireland

Reframing Health and Health Policy in Ireland ◽

10.7228/manchester/9780719095870.003.0006 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Derek Chambers

Keyword(s):

Mental Health ◽

Health Promotion ◽

Health Policy ◽

Mentally Ill ◽

Mental Health Policy ◽

Policy Documents ◽

Health Strategy ◽

Provision Of Services ◽

Mental Health Service User ◽

Promotion Campaigns

This chapter focuses on the area of mental health policy as an arena in which expert systems, in the form of biomedical discourses and psychiatry, have played a central role in constituting mental health ‘subjects’. The analysis focuses on the discourses emerging from recent mental health policy documents, including Ireland’s main mental health strategy, A Vision for Change. Drawing on Dean’s ideas about fields of visibility and valued knowledge, this chapter suggests that despite a broadening of understanding of mental health beyond medicalised discourses, seen most recently in health promotion campaigns and suicide prevention strategies, in practice, the focus remains on the mental health service user, and the provision of services for those who are mentally ‘ill’. Attempts to reconfigure mental health as something which affects ‘all of us’, and moves beyond mental ‘illness’ – which, it is argued, may have the potential to open up less stigmatising modes of understanding about mental health – are hampered by the continuing dominance of the biomedical frameworks of understanding.

Download Full-text

Psychiatry in Transition: Outcomes of Mental Health Policy Shift in Italy

Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry ◽

10.3109/00048679809113122 ◽

1998 ◽

Vol 32 (5) ◽

pp. 673-679 ◽

Cited By ~ 30

Author(s):

Angelo Barbato

Keyword(s):

Mental Health ◽

Health Policy ◽

Mentally Ill ◽

Full Range ◽

Mental Health Policy ◽

Monitoring And Evaluation ◽

Community Services ◽

Quality Of Data ◽

Negative Effects ◽

Hard Data

Objective: To assess the outcomes of changes in mental health policy introduced in Italy in 1978. Methods: Data on psychiatric services, before and after the policy change, are presented. Effects of change are evaluated through indicators related to four issues: transfer of care, criminalisation of the mentally ill, suicides, and homelessness. Results: Admissions of new patients to mental hospitals have been stopped and the size of the mental hospital population is now very low (26 per 100 000 population). Psychiatric care has been shifted to community services including general hospital psychiatric units. There has been an overall reduction of psychiatric hospitalisation. However, the provision of residential facilities is inadequate and community services are unevenly distributed across the country. Few negative effects of changing patterns of care have been reported, although the low quality of data limits the validity of such a conclusion. Outcome of care in areas where the full range of community services is available has been rated as satisfactory. Conclusions: Although care of the mentally ill has been shifted to community services, we lack hard data on the social and clinical outcome of communty care at the nation-wide level. Long-term monitoring and evaluation of community services is a high priority in Italy.

Download Full-text