Developing a National Mental Health Policy by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Psychology, Public Policy, Social Services & Welfare, Mental Health, Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781135426101
Google: pMd4AgAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 17516354
Publisher: Psychology Press
Published: 2002-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

PROBLEMS IN IMPLEMENTATION

A number of countries have model projects which have not been disseminated across the whole country and it is important to explore the reasons why this might be the case. Lack of resources is obviously an important factor, but it has been argued that reasons for slow development may include:

Cultural resistance to either the specific explanations for illness or the implications of modernisation in general (Gallagher, 1993).

The absence of indigenous capital with which to modernise the existing social and economic infrastructure and to create the organisational resources necessary to establish an enterprise as sizeable as a health care system (Reich, 1993).

The fact that neither international donors nor local governments have hitherto considered health services to be a priority for external donor funding compared with development of the physical infrastructure or the creation of viable economic organisations (Hecht, 1995).

The perceived importance of physical health as opposed to mental health as a priority in developing societies serves to restrain the growth of mental health systems ( Desjarlais et al., 1995; Harpham, 1994).

Countries may like to retain examples of modern services for their symbolic value as indicators of modernisation, but not to put in sufficient resources to disseminate the modern service across the whole country. Thus the new mental health service serves a symbolic rather than a functional purpose giving the country cognitive, socioeconomic and political legitimacy, helping to draw resources into the country from external sources. Thus the authors argue that such demonstration sites of modern health systems will not disappear but neither will they expand to the level required to address actual levels of psychological disorder in the population (Tausig & Subedi, 1997).

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.