Article révisé par les pairs
| Résumé : | It can be said that psychiatry in the seven countries visited, is developing technically towards a sectorial and community diversification of techniques for combating mental illness. At the same time, it seeks to achieve a greater degree of understanding on the part of those who provide its funds, so that the sums necessary for this development will be forthcoming. The public health ministries and administrations concerned ought to argue the case for their investment budgets more strongly with national and local financing bodies, and, most important, obtain larger operational budgets from the social security organizations whose relative autonomy, fragmentation and influence are often obstacles to the implementation of these goals in some countries. The limitations of this comparative study of social security for the mentally ill should be defined. These are related both to the fact that the study had to be limited to a few broad subjects, leaving to one side many elements whose final impact is far from negligible, and to the fact that this kind of study takes a situation at one given time and shows in fixed immobility what is necessarily an ever changing reality. Social security systems, more than others, are in a state of constant development, displaying convergent trends which, fortunately for man, may one day make these systems akin to one another. |
