Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T16:20:12.626Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

30 - Conclusion: the central issues

from Part V - Unmet need: conclusion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 August 2009

Gavin Andrews
Affiliation:
University of New South Wales, Sydney
Scott Henderson
Affiliation:
Australian National University, Canberra
Get access

Summary

It is only towards the end of the present millennium that mental disorders have come to take their place in health care. The burden they place on communities is now irrefutable. Psychiatric epidemiology has played a vital part in two ways in the process of achieving greater recognition for the needs of people with mental disorders. The use of epidemiological information for advocacy stands separately from scientific studies of what determines the onset and course of mental disorders. The problem of unmet need straddles both advocacy and science.

Until the first half of the twentieth century, people with more severe disorders were sent to specially built hospitals; and it was not recognized that a range of disabling mental disorders was also to be found in the general population. Epidemiology helped to change this. The community-based surveys pioneered by research psychiatrists such as Brugger (1933) in Germany, Srole, Langner, Michael, Opler & Rennie (1962) and the Leightons (Leighton, Harding, Macklin, Hughes & Leighton, 1963) in North America, Taylor & Chave (1964) in Britain, Hagnell & Öjesjö (1975) in Sweden, Dube (1968) in India, and Krupinski & Stoller (1971) in Australia helped to persuade policy makers that a sizeable fraction of the general population had clinically significant psychiatric symptoms and that these were accompanied by disablement of some economic significance. In retrospect, it is now possible to see that attitudes and beliefs about the needs of people with mental disorders have changed considerably during the later decades of the twentieth century. Indeed it was only in the second half of the twentieth century that psychiatry began to take a more appropriate place in medical education, and that the first professors of psychiatry were appointed in most medical schools.

Type
Chapter
Information
Unmet Need in Psychiatry
Problems, Resources, Responses
, pp. 422 - 428
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2000

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×