Mental health in the early 1980s: some perspectives.

The field of mental health, at the present time, has an important potential for rapid development. The reasons for this include important new knowledge that has become available, increased awareness of governments about the size of mental health problems and about the importance of psychosocial factors, and the development of an appropriate technology and a new doctrine of mental health care which allow useful interventions to be made, even when financial resources are extremely scarce.