Clinical classification in mental health at the cross-roads: which direction next?

Clinical classification in mental health at the cross-roads: which direction next?

BACKGROUND After 30 years of consensus-derived diagnostic categories in mental health, it is time to head in new directions. Those categories placed great emphasis on enhanced reliability and the capacity to identify them via standardized checklists. Although this enhanced epidemiology and health services planning, it failed to link broad diagnostic groupings to underlying pathophysiology or sp...

Mental health reform: Europe at the cross-roads.

In June 2008, the European Commission (EC) will host a High Level Conference, under the auspices of Commission President José Manuel Barroso, to discuss the establishment of a new European Pact for Mental Health. This is the latest of several high profile initiatives on mental health to have taken place in Europe. Most notably, in 2005, the World Health Organization was instrumental in bringing...

Neutrino Astrophysics at the Cross Roads

The indications for neutrino oscillations from the atmospheric and solar neutrino anomalies and from the LSND experiment are now so overwhelming that the discourse in neutrino physics has changed. One no longer asks if these particles indeed oscillate, one rather debates the most plausible pattern of masses and mixing angles, and if the existence of a sterile neutrino is required. Of course, al...

American Tropical Medicine at the Cross-roads

Cross-National Diffusion of Mental Health Policy

Background Following the tenets of world polity and innovation diffusion theories, I focus on the coercive and mimetic forces that influence the diffusion of mental health policy across nations. International organizations’ mandates influence government behavior. Dependency on external resources, namely foreign aid, also affects governments’ formulation of national policy. And finally, mounting...