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On February 5, 1963, President Kennedy delivered the first message on Mental Illness and Mental Retardation to the Congress of the United States. In this address the President asked the Federal Government to assume the initiative in developing a new approach to the prevention and treatment of mental disorders.
The message expressed dissatisfaction with the state hospital system and proposed a new programme of interlocking community services that would focus on the total population of the mentally ill. In the past, traditional psychiatry had been confronted with lessening the level of pathology in the individual while present-day community psychiatry should be concerned with lessening the level of pathology in the population.
Few people doubt that there is a need for improving the care of the mentally ill. The advent of the psychotropic drugs and the increasing understanding of the influence of social processes on human behaviour permit a new emphasis and approach to mental disorders. Juvenile delinquency, drug addiction, alcoholism, suicide, and homicide seem to bear some relationship to the breakdown of the family unit, traditional value systems, and the tensions and pressures of an urbanized society.
Community psychiatry has become the style of the moment (Whittington, 1966), and it has resulted in the formation of comprehensive community mental health centres. These centres co-ordinate their efforts with all of the care-giving agencies for early case finding, prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation of the mentally ill. As a sub-speciality, community psychiatry reflects the increasing assumption of responsibility by the government for the welfare of its citizens.
Although the practical need for the development of social and community psychiatry is rarely questioned, one can ask in all good faith whether or not this new approach will remain a sub-speciality, an applied science, or if it will make a significant contribution towards understanding the etiology