81 In 2007, a landmark series of papers on mental health appeared in The Lancet. 1 Some of the key messages emerging from the series were that mental disorders are inextricably linked with other concerns: there can be " no health without mental health " ; mental disorders affect people in all societies, but especially the disadvantaged, vulnerable and poor; mental disorders are a leading cause ...

Globally, the majority of people with mental health problems do not receive evidence-based interventions that can transform their lives. We describe six mental health policy actions adopted at the World Innovation Summit for Health in 2013. For each policy action, we offer real-world examples of mental health innovations that governments and health care providers can implement to move toward un...

BACKGROUND The objective of this international comparative study is to describe and compare the mental health policies in seven countries of Eastern Europe that share their common communist history: Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia. METHODS The health policy questionnaire was developed and the country-specific information was gathered by local expe...

The book provides a well documented basic overview of the main developments and dilemmas in the field. It contains eleven chapters, the first sketching conceptualisations of mental illness and public health issues over time, especially the divide between the medical model and the social causation model developed in antipsychiatry. The second chapter resumes developments in policy making on stra...

The development of political agenda-setting through the use of sophisticated public relations techniques is threatening to undermine the delicate balance of representative democracy. This has important ramifications for policies aimed at providing mental health services and the implementation of mental health laws. The principal agenda setters in this area are pharmaceutical companies with comm...

This work reconstructs the atmosphere that developed in the city of Arezzo with the approval and application of Italian Law 180. A detailed description of the events, which saw this mediumsized community involved in what was to become an example for mental health policy, helps to illustrate the values underlying Italian Law 180. This endeavour was at once a scientific, cultural and political pr...

The purpose of the research programme introduced in this article is to provide new knowledge regarding comprehensive multisectoral approaches to breaking the negative cycle of poverty and mental ill-health. The programme undertakes an analysis of existing mental health policies in four African countries (Ghana, South Africa, Uganda, Zambia), and will carry out and evaluate interventions to assi...

Progress in mental health services has been made incrementally in a sequence of policy steps. In recent years, in spite of political conservatism, progressive changes have advanced new principles of service delivery. Reports from the surgeon general and the President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health advanced these principles, including recovery and evidence-based practices. Both of the...

BACKGROUND Recovery has become an increasingly prominent concept in mental health policy internationally. However, there is a lack of guidance regarding organisational transformation towards a recovery orientation. This study evaluated the implementation of recovery-orientated practice through training across a system of mental health services. METHODS The intervention comprised four full-day...