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The Forum > Article Comments > Cracking up? The unsustainability of government mental health policy > Comments

Cracking up? The unsustainability of government mental health policy : Comments

By Xue Wang, published 28/11/2013

Since the birth of the mental health profession, psychological professionals have been struggling with distinguishing the mentally ill from the sane.

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Unfortunately not a terribly helpful article. Mixing behavioural relativist asides with complex and confusing medical funding themes.

Hence at the end the author concludes [my comment are within the square brackets]:

"1.accept diverse behaviors and stop labelling
[A hospital or health service cannot determine who needs the most treatment (including admission to facilities like hospital mental health wards) without some labelling (better expressed as classification, DSM or otherwise)] ;

2.minimize its intervention in the mental health profession and let a hundred professional flowers boom;
[What Cultural Revolution-speak rubbish is this? Expensive mental health facilities need central government managing to ensure a democratic and rational distribution of money and staffing.]
and, finally

3.maximize job opportunities so that people have freedom to chose their own way of improving productivity."
[An unexceptional statement that all can agree on. The problem is that resources need to be equitably allocated across different hospitals and other health providers.]

The behavioural relativist argument of the author is unhelpful particularly regarding many people in mental health facilities who (from time to time or permanently) have difficulty looking after themselves on the outside. Also some people can have such extreme behaviour that they can't function socially and safely ie. they need help.
Posted by plantagenet, Thursday, 28 November 2013 4:45:49 PM
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