Article(s) 28 February 2011

Until the 1960s, the majority of mental health problems were treated in mental hospitals. Operating essentially as a daycare service, they often took in several thousand “patients”, and offered very little in structured treatments. However, things changed very quickly as a result of several factors: the introduction of antipsychotics, the development of medical specialization programs in psychiatry and, above all, patients’ criticisms regarding their living conditions in these hospitals.