Social Psychiatry: The Future of Psychiatry?

Social psychiatry is concerned with the link between society and mental health. Born shortly before the Second World War, under the controversial auspices of mental hygiene, social psychiatry subsequently played a key role in the reforms of psychiatric services and the shift to community care. Influenced by antipsychiatry, epidemiology, sociology, and politics, this field is essentially interdisciplinary. The ideological dimension of the 60s has evolved into a more mature technology and scientific basis, which has enabled alternatives to asylums to be found, with community support and social inclusion for people with severe mental health problems. Today, the recovery paradigm and the empowerment of people and their relatives are changing the way mental health systems and services are organized. Rapid social transformations related to technological change, migration, or the structure of the labor market are creating new challenges for the mental health of populations. Individual solutions such as medication or psychotherapy, will not be able to meet all these systemic challenges. Social psychiatry is therefore more than ever necessary to address these complex issues at the various levels of society, services, and individual needs.