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Do we still need mental hospitals?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2014

Lorenzo Burti
Lorenzo Burti*
Affiliation:
Cattedra di Igiene Mentale, Istituto di Psichiatria, Università di Verona, Ospedale Policlinico, 37134 Verona, Italy
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Extract

“The debate is over” claimed a heading in a newspaper on the 1991 Amsterdam WHO conference ‘Changing mental health care in the cities of Europe’: “After half a century of debate of the issue of deinstitutionalisation the question is not any more if we should close the large mental hospitals, but what follows the closure and how to develop adequate community mental health care which replaces the functions of the mental hospital” (Gersons & Burns, 1992).

These ‘functions’ have actually secured the long-lasting success of the mental hospital which has been in the past and, to a certain extent, still is in a number of countries, the cornerstone of psychiatric care. It incorporates all the functions of a psychiatric system in a single, usually isolated facility, including crisis intervention, evaluation, treatment, aftercare, long-term custodial care, rehabilitation, etc. In order to phase down the mental hospital these functions have to be supplemented by newly established, discrete services disseminated in the community. The process is clearly a complex one, since it implies a transition from a system of care provided only in mental hospitals under medical direction, to one that is comprehensive in scope, community-orientated, and staffed by multidisciplinary teams.

Type
Section A: Assessing Needs for Mental Health Services
Information
Epidemiologia e psichiatria sociale. Monograph Supplement , Volume 6 , Issue S1: Monograph Supplement 1: Making Rational Mental Health Services , April 1997 , pp. 29 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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