Guiding principles for the development of mental health policies in low- and middle- income countries.

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 importance of promoting community awareness about mental illness to increase levels of help-seeking, and the need to establish effective financial and budgetary provisions to offer direct support services to the community. According to this report and other articles on the subject, there are many principles that should be used to guide mental health policies. However, rather than compiling a long list of principles, I wish to bring into focus two important but often neglected concepts, i.e., Recovery and Consumer involvement. It is my belief that any mental health policy should aim at and promote the recovery of a person with mental health problems. To be successful, such policy should take into consideration the needs of consumers.