Psychiatry and primary health services in developing and developed countries

Abstract

Psychiatry and primary health services in developing and developed countries M. NIMBIn most developing countries. psychiatric and other mental health services are in a very weak position, not only in relation to other branches of medicine, but tend to have followed European institutional models, which only respond poorly to the overall mental health needs of the people. It is difficult to visualize any broad coverage of mental health services unless these become despecialized, decentralized and deinstitutionalized and from the ground level integrated with existing or planned general primary health services.In developed countries existing institutions have been upgraded and modernized to a considerable extent over the last decades. But the mental health component of the primary health services still leaves much to be desired. Much of the primary mental health services in industrialized countries are today being taken care of by the administrators and practitioners of the social welfare system. These services would have much to gain through a closer collaboration with the psychiatrists, who have so far had little influence in this important sphere.