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Challenging times for mental health services

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Matt Muijen*
Affiliation:
World Health OrganizationRegional Office for Europe, email [email protected]
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We are living in significant and challenging times for mental health services across the world. On the one hand, many countries are in the middle of comprehensive reforms of their mental health systems, and these require funding (WHO Europe, 2008). On the other, they are affected by the global financial crisis as regional and national economic recessions threaten to herald a social crisis in many countries. Governments have had to come up with multi-billion-dollar rescue packages. At an individual level, debt status is already high in many countries, owing to falling house prices and high consumption levels, combined with rising commodity prices during the past few years, before the onset of the recession. At a public level, countries will be forced to make stringent cuts in public sector expenditure.

Type
Guest Editorial
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits noncommercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal College of Psychiatrists 2010

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