From Institutional Walls to Community-Based Treatment – the Changing Forms of Support for People in Mental Health Crises

Abstrakt

According to the epidemiological study – EZOP II (2021), approximately 9 million Poles suffer from mental disorders. The statistics concerning the number of suicide attempts, as well as the scale of serious mental health crises among children and young people are increasingly worrying. The broadly understood support system faces the challenge of organising professional help for an increasing number of people who are at different stages of illness and therefore have different needs. The aim of this paper is to describe the process of changes in the approach to supporting people in mental health crises, with a particular focus on the transition from an asylum model geared towards inpatient treatment to a community-based model enabling people to receive support provided in a form as open as possible. The lack of long-term isolation is thought to counteract the phenomenon of stigma and to accelerate recovery from the deviant social role of the patient. The article presents specific community-based forms of support: Mental Health Centres, day wards, sheltered housing, and NGO activities. The impact of the community-based model on the wellbeing of not only the persons suffering, but also their loved ones and society as a whole, is assessed. Questions are raised concerning the future of the community-based model. The paper, apart from an attempt to diagnose the current situation, refers to sociological concepts, primarily from the sociology of medicine and the sociology of the family.