Mental health community outreach teams : from total institutions to radical democracy?

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00216224%3A14230%2F17%3A00098949" target="_blank" >RIV/00216224:14230/17:00098949 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

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DOI - Digital Object Identifier

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Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Mental health community outreach teams : from total institutions to radical democracy?

Original language description

In the Czech Republic there is a transformation of mental health care system under way. It is supposed to “deinstitutionalize and humanize” psychiatric care. It should create conditions for deeper cooperation of medical and social services for people diagnosed with severe mental illness, which have been deeply detached from each other so far. To manage these aims the reform builds on creation of “mental health centres” based on community outreach treatment that are supposed to replace a significant amount of beds in psychiatric hospitals. First few centres are already coming up across the country. They are created mostly by merging existing social and medical services. In any case it seems that in the process of establishing joint practices there are two different cultures encountering each other with different languages and values. The transformation process arouses many hopes among both clients/patients and mental health professionals. Big changes are expected by some. However there are also reasons to worry for all involved. One of the worries resonating among professionals as well as service users is that there will be no real change of practice regarding surveillance on the one hand and support for empowerment and autonomy of those designated as ill on the other. Some totalizing features of large psychiatric institutions may be moved closer to peoples’ homes and thus become even more pervasive. In the workshop I will discuss preliminary remarks from the field research in a community outreach team. It seems that transformation into a mental health centre brings uneasiness to the team that stemms from organizational as well as ideological issues. Team members with both medical and social work background worry that their perspective may be put aside. As there are different concepts of community outreach work present in the team sometimes it is unclear what to do, for instance whether, when and how to talk about clients.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

O - Miscellaneous

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

50400 - Sociology

Project

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Continuities

N - Vyzkumna aktivita podporovana z neverejnych zdroju

Publication year

2017

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů