The Mental Health Matrix: A Manual to Improve Services

There have been major changes to mental health services internationally in recent years revolving around the concept of care in the community. Although speed of change and precise service mechanisms differ between countries there is nevertheless increasingly widespread consensus on key components essential to adequate care provision. This in turn provides an opportunity to develop a widely acceptable model framework to direct future developments. There is certainly still room for reform in recognition of specific needs and improvements in treatment and care intervention. This book proposes a simple model which can be used as a guide to increased clinical effectiveness through focused evidence-based reform. Using a time/space framework, it is intended to act as a practical aid to diagnosis of strengths and weaknesses in services that will be used by care providers, trainees and planners both at local and higher levels.

Table of Contents:
Contributors; Foreword Sir David Goldberg; Preface Leon Eisenberg; Acknowledgements; Part I. The Context: 1. Aims, concepts and structure of the book; 2. Community, mental health services and the public health; 3. The historical context; Part II. The Matrix Model: The Geographical Dimension: 4. The country/regional level; 5. The local level; 6. The patient level; Part III. The Matrix Model: The Temporal Dimension: 7. The input phase; 8. The process phase; 9. The outcome phase; Part IV. Re-Forming Community-Based Mental Health Services: 10. The evidence base for mental health services; 11. The ethical base for mental health services: 'the three ACEs'; 12. Key resources: training and morale of staff; 13. Planning based on evidence and on ethical principles; Part V. International Perspectives on Re-Forming Mental Health Services: 14. Australia Alan Rosen; 15. Canada Alain D. Lesage; 16. Central and Eastern European countries Toma Tomov; 17. Nordic European countries Povl Munk-Jørgensen; 18. United States Richard Warner; Part VI. A Working Synthesis: 19. The matrix model as a pragmatic guide to improve services; References; Glossary; Index.

Review :
From the Foreword by Professor Sir David Goldberg: 'A watershed in writing about the mental illness services ... nothing will ever be quite the same again; it is a book certain to be widely read and quoted.' From the Preface by Professor Leon Eisenberg: 'The Mental Health Matrix is lucid, written in such simple and spare language as to make its concepts transparent, free of cant and of special pleading. For all these reasons, it should have a profound impact on the provision of mental health services.' 'This book deserves to be a success because it is articulating the voice of an emerging part of psychiatry with ... public mental health.' British Journal of Psychiatry