Good Mental Health Care: What It Is, What It Is Not & What It Could Be

Abstract What makes for good mental health care? What are the barriers to good care and, when they can be overcome, what accounts for successful treatment? What does successful treatment and care, in fact, mean? Can they mean different things to different people? If so, how can we think about them in a practical way that is useful to patients, families, and clinicians? On the one hand, from work infields as various as neuroscience, clinical psychology, and anthropology, we are learning (and rediscovering) more and more about how the human mind works and the many ways that psychological suffering can be preempted and treated. On the other hand, in many ways, the mental health care system is either dysfunctional or working against what we know to be best for psychological and social flourishing-the disappearance, for example, of true “care” from medical and mental health care systems. In this essay, set against the background of diverse perspectives provided by the foregoing essays in this volume, we attempt to frame and address some of these basic questions, giving priority to practical, down-to-earth, lay, and professional considerations.