Social psychiatry and public mental health: present situation and future objectives. Time for rethinking and renaissance?

Objective: To describe the social psychiatric challenges of modern psychiatry in European societies in the light of recent psychiatric research evidence and to show how these challenges could be conceptualized.

Method: Reviewing aggregate morbidity and mortality data from the WHO European Health for All Database, and summarizing consultations and fact-finding missions to many European countries during the authors engagement as WHO Regional Advisor for Mental health from 1998 to 2004.

Results: Societal change in Europe is leading to stress and mental ill health for its populations. The consequence is a dramatic increase in burden due to mental illness and stress-related morbidity and mortality.

Conclusion: A re-thought and re-conceptualized social and societal psychiatry with focus on public mental health must have a renaissance. Innovative efforts are of crucial and imperative importance seeing mental health in the light of recent experience and science as probably the most important public health issue.