Policy Changes in Community Mental Health : Interventions and Strategies Used in Sweden over 20 Years

• The deinstitutionalization of mental health care has changed the responsibilities of involved authoritiesand has led to a continuous need for new treatment forms and interventions. This articledescribes this development in Europe, and in particular how these new conditions have been handledin Sweden over the past 20 years at the level of governmental policy-making. Three major policydocuments from 1994, 2009 and 2012 were included in this study. To increase our understandingof the policies’ contents, we have used theoretical concepts concerning governance,implementation and political risk management. Although our main interest was to find out howthe government handles interventions for users of the mental health care system, we found that thepolicy work is progressing stepwise. The first document, from the deinstitutionalization era, did notdiscuss interventions clearly. Instead, it was mainly concerned with both practical and economicalareas of responsibility. The second document, from the post-deinstitutionalization era, was morefocused on what services should be delivered to the users, while the most recently published documentto a greater extent addressed the question of how the support is supposed to be designed. The trendin European community mental health policy has been to advocate services in open forms that areintegrated into the society’s other care systems. This is also the case in Sweden, and continuous workis being done by the government to find strategies to support the development, and to meet the needs atboth political and local levels.

Ämnesord

MEDICIN OCH HÄLSOVETENSKAP  -- Hälsovetenskap -- Hälso- och sjukvårdsorganisation, hälsopolitik och hälsoekonomi (hsv//swe)

MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES  -- Health Sciences -- Health Care Service and Management, Health Policy and Services and Health Economy (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Annan samhällsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Other Social Sciences (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Annan samhällsvetenskap -- Övrig annan samhällsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Other Social Sciences -- Other Social Sciences not elsewhere specified (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Mental health policy

Community mental health

Governance

Implementation

Sweden

Psychiatry

Mental health policy; Community mental health, Governance, Implementation, Sweden, Psychiatry

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

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