The Philippines is one of the world's most heavily populated countries. Even though democracy was restored in 1986 after years of occupation and dictatorship, a high level of poverty still exists and malnutrition and communicable diseases continue to be the main cause of morbidity. For almost 50 years people with mental disorders have been treated in a mental hospital setting. The National Ment...

The Malaysian Mental Health Act 2001 did not come into effect until the Mental Health Regulations 2010 came into force. The Act provides a framework for the delivery of comprehensive care, treatment, control, protection and rehabilitation of those with mental disorders. The Act governs the establishment of private and government psychiatric hospitals, psychiatric nursing homes and community men...

BACKGROUND standardised assessment is recommended in geriatric practice to improve patient care and generate quality data for audit and research. High level indicators used to measure performance of rehabilitation units suggested that more patients were discharged to long-term residential care from one of two hospitals in a Health Authority in South East England. OBJECTIVES to test whether th...

The last half-century of psychiatric services in the United States is examined through developments and trends reported in the 50 years of publication of Psychiatric Services. The journal, earlier named Mental Hospitals and then Hospital and Community Psychiatry, was launched by the American Psychiatric Association in January 1950 and marks its 50th anniversary this year. The author organizes h...

Increase in facilities Although our rate of mental illness has not gone up, our network of special hospitals and outpatient clinics has grown considerably. For example, the number of facilities increased from 8,700 in 1955 and 9,865 in 1957 to 11,735 in 1960. The total number of beds at the disposal of the mental health service in 1963 was 195,934, including beds of clinics attached to psychiat...

BACKGROUND Pathway studies highlight the help-seeking behaviors of patients with physical and mental illnesses. A number of studies in this field have been completed in various parts of the world. The purpose of this study is to explore the characteristics of the help-seeking pathways of patients with mental illness from urban north China at Mental Health Professional (MHP). METHODS The pathw...

The Child Guidance Council has always been interested in demonstrating the value of psychiatric social work for adult patients. As far back as 1927, a worker was loaned to the psychiatric department of a general hospital, but it was not till 1930 that a beginning was made in introducing such workers into hospitals dealing with acute mental patients. In 1929 permission had been obtained for stud...

Perspectives Stigma towards people living with mental health problems is often the result of deep-rooted fears about irrational behaviour or loss of control. 1 When we conducted a study of recruitment and retention factors for staff in Ghanaian psychiatric hospitals, we found that the stigma was directed towards mental health professionals too. Some of our respondents linked the pervasive stigm...

Since 1984, when the EEC Program 815/84 was introduced, the term “psychiatric reform” was made synonymous to the imperative change of the asylic psychiatry towards a decentralized and community based psychiatric care. This program presented various stages of non absorption of funds, stagnation and finally a developmental phase until the completion of the program in 1995. A total of 250 new serv...