PROBLEMS OF COMMUNITY PSYCHIATRY

An analysis of existing psychiatric facilities in the community reveals their heterogeneity and fragmentation. Parallel, overlapping and non-communicating, they deal with treatment in a piecemeal fashion and with prevention only by default. Divorce between the different therapeutic phases of what is often the same illness violates any continuity of care. The provincial mental hospital, which arose in part out of social pressure to isolate the "mad" patient, finds itself, often enough, isolated in turn from the community it serves.Greater integration of available treatment resources for the psychiatric patient would serve both his interest and the general concepts of preventive and rehabilitative medicine. An understanding of how this may be achieved may engender social and professional impetus toward the accomplishment. The general hospital is a logical coordinating focus for these facilities and when it has adopted this role this might lead to a greater acceptance of emotional illness by both patients and doctors.