Bringing changes to Asian mental health

Abstract

Asian Psychiatry like the Asian continent has a very diverse and complex history of development that has led to enormous gaps in level of advancement. The very affluent countries have very well developed medical services; but most Asian psychiatric services, training and state of advancement leaves a lot to be desired. The marginalization of psychiatric services and mental health in health care in Asia has led to very irregular development of basic services for the mentally ill. Concepts such as counseling, psychotherapy, rehabilitation are far behind in practice compared to medication in Asia. There are also poor human and material resources for the 21st century's practice of psychiatry in the community or hospital settings. This paper discusses some of these problems and suggests some alternative ways to overcome them.