Mental health is not just the absence of mental disorder, but is a state in which an individual has a sense of well being in which he or she realizes his or her own potential, can cope with the normal stresses of life and thus can work productively and fruitfully and is able to contribute to their own community. Mental illness is not uncommon with approximately 450 million people affected globa...

* Correspondence: [email protected] The forum article by Professor Xie raises the broad issue of whether mental health legislation in China needs to respond to the existing realities of the community mental health services system. Given the lack of community mental health resources in China, the burden of caring for persons with mental illnesses has traditionally been borne by families and by...

For many years, the conventional wisdom in the field of mental health has been that severe mental illnesses, particularly schizophrenia, inevitably result in progressive deterioration. Professional practice has then understandably focused on managing psychopathology and its symptoms. Research efforts in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s documented the heterogeneity of outcomes, particularly for indivi...

Background: An important function of research is to identify community needs in certain fields. As mental health is a vital issue to us, identifying and prioritizing mental health needs is important to policy makers to help them in setting goals for different programs that meet the needs of a specific community in a certain health area. Purpose: To identify the health research needs in the fiel...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the impact of a mental health elective on pharmacy students' perceptions and stigmatizing views of mental illness. DESIGN An elective was designed that featured an advanced overview of psychopharmacology; student training in motivational interviewing; a presentation by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) local chapter; introduction to pharmacy collaborations w...

Research in the field of mental health has long stressed the high burden of mental disorders, which were found to be among the most disabling health conditions. Furthermore, many countries encounter difficulties in maintaining access to mental health care services due to economic stress and governmental priorities which do not include (mental) health. Therefore, new interventions in mental heal...

In this review, a synthesis of studies employing community-based participatory research (CBPR) to address mental health problems of minorities, strengths and challenges of the CBPR approach with minority populations are highlighted. Despite the fact that minority community members voiced a need for innovative approaches to address culturally unique issues, findings revealed that most researcher...

With the passage of the Mental Health Parity Act of 1996 (MHPA), Congress took an important first step toward equalizing treatment under medical plans between physical and mental illnesses by requiring parity in annual and lifetime dollar limits between physical and mental illness. But the Act was limited in scope: it did not mandate mental health benefits nor prohibit other common types of dif...

The recovery alliance theory (RAT) is a mid-range theory of mental health nursing based on humanistic philosophy. The conception of the RAT was the outcome of collaboration among service users, practising mental health nurses, educationalists and managers and was developed in the context of a number of political and social changes as well as changes in the mental health field. The theory is com...