Community Mental Health Journal, Vol. 40, No. 3, June 2004 ( 2004)

Introduction to Special Issue:Mental Health Around the World

David L. Cutler, M.D.

From time to time I think we all get impatient with the way thingswork in our corner of the world. In fact when it comes to systems ofcare I usually assume that things are done better elsewhere. That maynot necessarily be the case but when the alignment of the continentsis correct we here at the journal can sometimes put together a collectionof articles which give us myopic Americans an opportunity to see theoutside world where things are different. This is one of those opportuni-ties. In this issue we have examples of mental health care on threeother continents. From Europe we have an update from the famousSouth Verona mental health program on 20 years of Italian reformand from London a story of program closures and it’s effects on socialnetworks. A Paper from Switzerland (now a member of the UN) on theeffects of stigma rounds out the continent of Europe. From one end ofAsia (Israel) we have another paper on stigma and the other side ofAsia (Japan) a paper on suicide prevention in the elderly. I grant youAsia is a rather large continent but CMHJ has it covered from one endto the other. Finally from our friends in the land down under we havea needs assessment tool study which borrows something from one conti-nent to test usefulness on another. This business of world wide exchangeof ideas seems to me to be a good thing. It is not a new thing. Forexample after Dr. Pinel freed the mental patients at the Bicetre Hospitalin Paris in 1792 the idea of Moral Treatment of the mentally ill traveledacross the English channel as the York Retreat and later to N. Americain the early 19th century to the first American Moral treatment sitethe Hartford Retreat. John Galt of the Williamsburg asylum in Virginiatried something similar in the early 1840’s hoping to replicate the mental

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health colony of Geel Belgium in the Virginia countryside. Unfortunatelythat idea was interrupted by the American civil war. At any rate ideastraveling across the oceans in this universally stigmatized field of oursseem just as important now as they were then. Our introductory articleintroduces a new series on “Heroes in Community Psychiatry.” Dr.Gerald Caplan’s career has spanned two centuries and three continentsand stands as an example of the universal nature of mental health andmental illness.