The development of an excellent mental health system at the national level or even the state or provincial jurisdiction resembles the search for the Holy Grail. We are not there yet, and some stakeholders doubt we will ever get there. The last 20 years has seen an explosion of progressive mental health policy statements in a number of jurisdictions. However, it is difficult to find national men...

OBJECTIVES The aim of the present study was to document Australian policies on the physical health of people with mental illness and evaluate the capacity of policy to support health needs. METHODS A search of state and federal policies on mental and physical illness was conducted, as well as detailed analysis of policy content and the relationships between policies, by applying the World Hea...

Professor Graham Thornicroft, drew the guidelines for taking the necessary steps towards the implementation of a communitybased mental health care program and for overcoming obstacles and avoiding mistakes preventing this. The Task Force’s main recommendations address the need for coordinated policies, plans and programs, the requirement to scale up services for entire populations, the importan...

Mental health issues are usually given very low priority in health service policies. Although this is changing, African countries are still confronted with so many problems caused by communicable diseases and malnutrition that they have not waken up to the impact of mental disorders. Every country must formulate a mental health policy based on its own social and cultural realities. Such policie...

In many low and middle income countries, attention to mental illness remains compartmentalized and consigned as a matter for specialist policy. Despite great advances in global mental health, mental health policy and practice dovetail only to a limited degree with social development efforts. They often lag behind broader approaches to health and development. This gap ignores the small but growi...

BACKGROUND Assessing and understanding health systems governance is crucial to ensure accountability and transparency, and to improve the performance of mental health systems. There is a lack of systematic procedures to assess governance in mental health systems at a country level. The aim of this study was to appraise mental health systems governance in Nepal, with the view to making recommend...

BACKGROUND Depression is one of the leading causes of disability in Australia. The cultural and linguistic diversity of the Australian population poses a significant challenge to health policy development, service provision, professional education, and research. The purpose of this study is to explore the extent to which the fact of cultural and linguistic diversity has influenced the formulati...

Since publication of the U.S. Surgeon General's report Mental Health: Culture, Race and Ethnicity--A Supplement to Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2001), several federal initiatives signal a sustained focus on addressing African American-White American disparities in mental health treatment access and quality and open the way to unpr...

Most specialised mental health services in Australia are delivered in community settings and one in six services comprise involuntary treatment. Despite a growing demand for community treatment orders (CTOs) worldwide - and comparatively high rates of use in Australia - the clinical, legal and ethical aspects of CTOs remain contentious. This article examines federal, state and territory mental ...

Mental health is a low priority in most countries around the world. Minimal research and resources have been invested in mental health at the national level. As a result, WHO has developed the Assessment Instrument for Mental Health Systems (WHO-AIMS) to encourage countries to gather data and to re-evaluate their national mental health policy. This paper demonstrates the utility and limitations...