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SPRING 2012 21
21
Alberto Minoletti is a professor at the School of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, Univer-
sity of Chile, Santiago, Chile, and former director of the Mental Health Department, Ministry
of Health, Chile (1997–2010). Rafael Sepúlveda is the head of the Department of Psychiatry
at Barros Luco Hospital, professor of psychiatry at Universidad Mayor, and senior lecturer
at the School of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, University of Chile, Santiago, Chile.
Marcela Horvitz-Lennon is a psychiatrist and mental health services researcher at RAND
Corporation, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
International Journal of Mental Health, vol. 41, no. 1, Spring 2012, pp. 21–37.
© 2012 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. All rights reserved. Permissions: www.copyright.com
ISSN 0020–7411 (print)/ISSN 1557–9328 (online)
DOI: 10.2753/IMH0020-7411410102
Al b e r t o Mi n o l e t t i , rA fA e l Se p ú lv e d A ,
A n d MA r c e l A Ho rv i t z -le n n o n
Twenty Years of Mental Health Policies
in Chile
Lessons and Challenges
ABSTRACT: Over the last 20 years, Chile has increased the mental health share
of its public health budget and implemented policies that radically transformed
psychiatric services in the country. Both national and international factors have
contributed to this process. The implementation of two national mental health plans
has led to downsizing mental hospitals and developing community alternatives,
such as primary health care, community mental health teams, day hospitals, acute
psychiatric beds in general hospitals, and group homes. The annual number of new
persons starting treatment for mental disorders in the public sector has increased
by 343 percent between 2004 and 2007, with depression being the condition that
motivates the highest frequency of visits. The Chilean experience has been successful
in terms of increasing availability and accessibility of services and demonstrating
that with a modicum of political support, it is possible to implement an effective
and efficient community-based network of primary and secondary care facilities.
Notwithstanding the progress made in this country, the mental health treatment
gap is still significant.
Explicit mental health policies provide governments with a powerful means to
develop services and programs aimed at meeting the mental health needs of the
22 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MENTAL HEALTH
population in a humane fashion [1]. This prioritization is consistent with the burden
of the disease, and the policies provide a general blueprint and broad objectives for
future action and facilitate agreement among different stakeholders [1]. In Latin
America and the Caribbean, mental health policies have been strongly influenced
by the Caracas Declaration and its call to integrate mental health into primary care,
shift to a community-based care paradigm, and protect the human rights of people
with mental disability [2]. The momentum generated in the regional conference
held in Caracas in 1990 was furthered through the Pan American Health Organiza-
tion/World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO) Initiative for the Restructuring of
Psychiatric Services whose goal was to promote and support mental health reform
initiatives in Latin America.
Valuable lessons may be learned from analyzing the policy-making efforts set
off by the Caracas Declaration. Although the obstacles have been varied, and the
resources available for mental health are still insufficient and inequitably distributed,
important progress has been achieved in several countries [2]. In 1990, the same year
the Caracas Declaration was launched, Chile ended 17 years of right-wing dictator-
ship by electing a government open to social policies and to strengthening the public
health system. These two historical landmarks and the leadership of a group of pro-
fessionals advocating for community-based services were key drivers for increasing
the mental health share of the public health budget [3] and the implementation of
policies that radically transformed psychiatric services in the country [3, 4].
Historical Background
Chile’s enthusiastic embrace of the ideals put forth in the Caracas Declaration
is rooted in three significant public health developments dating back to the early
1950s: a vigorous tradition of mental health epidemiological research, the imple-
mentation of a publicly funded health care system of national reach, and several
earlier attempts to implement community-based mental health services. Starting
in 1954 and led by the psychiatrists Juan Marconi and Jose Horwitz, Chilean
researchers conducted epidemiological studies that used case ascertainment and
random sampling methods to assess the prevalence of alcoholism and other mental
disorders among Santiago residents [5, 6]. The military dictatorship put an end to
this important public health endeavor, and it would take two decades for the second
generation of epidemiological research in Chile to emerge [7].
With the implementation in 1952 of a publicly funded national health care
system, Chile developed an extensive network of primary, secondary, and tertiary
care facilities. This system was funded by tax revenue and payroll contributions,
and covered more than 70 percent of the population, mainly blue-collar workers
and indigent people, who received health care services and medication free of
charge. Since its implementation, Chile’s health indicators improved progressively,
reaching one of the best levels in Latin America. Infant mortality rates decreased
from 136.2 per 1,000 live births in 1950 to only 55.4 in 1975, and general mortality
SPRING 2012 23
declined from 14.8 per 1,000 inhabitants to 7.2 in the same period [8].The national
health system also included the two mental hospitals existing in the country, and
two others were added in the late 1960s through the reconversion of old hospitals
(one previously used for infectious diseases and the other for tuberculosis).
Inspired by neoliberal doctrines and with the aim of fostering the privatization
of large areas of the economy, the military dictatorship (1973–90) embarked on a
series of radical reforms of the Chilean health care system [9]. Key among these
reforms were the transformation of the public health system into a decentralized
network of twenty-six autonomous territorial health authorities whose financial
management was entrusted to a national health fund, the introduction of legisla-
tion to promote the privatization of the health care market, and the transfer of ad-
ministrative and financial responsibility for primary care to municipalities. Public
spending on health care was reduced, and the national system was fragmented into
poorly coordinated sectors.
Earlier attempts to implement community-based mental health services occurred
in the 1950s with the implementation of scattered psychiatric beds and outpatients
departments in general hospitals and in the late 1960s with the formulation of a
national mental health program. Although the latter program was never imple-
mented in full because of a lack of political support and resources, it remains an
important milestone because it espoused a public health approach to addressing
the high burden of mental disorders. The program called for the development of
a network of services based in primary care centers and general hospitals and
for the implementation of day hospitals, group homes, and sheltered workshops.
A few pilot trials were implemented in the country where psychiatrists, general
practitioners, and other health professionals put some aspects of this program into
practice [10, 11]. These pilot trials and many other public health initiatives were
shut down in 1973 as a result of the military coup, and many of its leaders were
killed, jailed, exiled, or forced out of the public health system. The only innova-
tive services that survived through the dictatorship were ambulatory psychiatric
services based in general hospitals and the treatment of alcohol dependence in
primary care centers.
First National Mental Health Policy (1993–99)
The community orientation for delivering mental health services that was the
bedrock of the Caracas Declaration found a receptive audience in Chile, a country
that in 1990 was just returning to democracy, eager to finally begin to address long-
ignored social problems. A second generation of community-oriented professionals
emerged in Chile, influenced by the pre-1973 experience and the psychiatric reforms
that were taking place in Western Europe and North America. The dissemination
of the principles and practices of the psychiatric reform movement was further
favored by the return to the country of mental health professionals who were in
exile during the dictatorship.
24 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MENTAL HEALTH
In 1990, a Mental Health Unit was created within the Ministry of Health, and
in 1993, the first national mental health plan was signed into law by the minister
of health [12]. In each of the country’s twenty-six territorial health authorities,
two or three staff members were charged with implementing the national poli-
cies, coordinating the local mental health services network, managing the mental
health budget, planning for additional services, and evaluating the mental health
care provided [13]. The advent of democracy led to improvements in the financing
and organization of publicly funded health care and the invigoration of the then-
languishing primary care. These developments provided a favorable climate for
the new mental health initiatives.
The national mental health plan was implemented gradually over a period of 7
years. Service innovations included the creation of day hospitals to decrease the
number and duration of hospitalizations, group homes to facilitate the process of
deinstitutionalization, psychosocial rehabilitation programs to help persons with
mental disability integrate into the community, and mental health programs in
primary care to narrow the mental health treatment gap. The incorporation of psy-
chologists to the primary care workforce in sixty of Chile’s 487 urban primary care
centers was a successful—yet poorly sustainable—innovation that demonstrated
the important role that mental health professionals can play in primary care when
working alongside general practitioners.
The implementation of the plan did not occur flawlessly, however. Depending
on the local political support and resources, the plan was implemented consistently
only in some regions and localities; the coordination between primary care facili-
ties and community mental health centers was weak, resulting in a duplication of
some interventions, while others were not adequately provided by either setting;
government contracts for various aspects of the plan were only issued on a year-
to-year basis, making continuity of professionals difficult to ensure; and the mental
health budget for community services was inadequate to the task of transforming
a system that had been largely centered on psychiatric hospitals.
Second National Mental Health Policy (2000–10)
The lessons learned from the implementation of the first plan and the experience
from psychiatric reforms in other countries, including a focus on evidence-based
care and best practices, were important inputs to the development of a second na-
tional mental health plan during 1999. A draft written by the Ministry of Health’s
Mental Health Unit was subjected to a process of extensive consultations and
revisions that involved different stakeholders throughout the country. As a parallel
development, advocates called for greater resources for mental health, arguing that
the 1999 allocation of only 1.3 percent of the health budget for mental health care
was vastly insufficient to meet the needs of the population.
The second plan was launched in 2000 and focused on seven priority areas:
1) promotion and prevention in mental health, 2) attention deficit hyperactivity
SPRING 2012 25
disorder in children and adolescents, 3) mental conditions associated with violence
(domestic violence and violence associated with the dictatorship), 4) depression,
5) schizophrenia, 6) drug and alcohol abuse and dependence, and 7) Alzheimer’s
disease and other dementias [14]. For each of these priorities, the plan provided
service delivery guidelines specific to primary and secondary care. The main strate-
gies utilized for the implementation of the plan were [4, 15–19]:
• Allocationof publicsectorfundsformentalhealthwiththegoalbeing to
gradually increase mental health care funds from 1.3 percent of the global
health budget to 5 percent in 2010 and an increasing allocation of funds for
primary care.
• Implementationofacomprehensivenetworkofcommunity-basedservices
as an alternative to psychiatric hospitals.
• Participationofpersonswithmentaldisordersandtheirfamiliesintheplanning
and evaluation of mental health services at local and national levels.
• Primarycarecentersastheentrypointforthetreatmentforallmentaldisorders
and as the main providers of mental health care, the goal being that a much
higher proportion of people with mental disorder should be treated in primary
care than in secondary care.
• Augmentationof mental healthexpertiseof primarycare teams where all
urban primary care centers would have at least one full-time psychologist and
would receive consultation from psychiatrists, psychologists, or other mental
health specialists through monthly visits primarily aimed at supporting the
teams in their management of difficult patients.
• Implementationofacomprehensiveprogramforthetreatmentofdepression
led by psychologists and general practitioners. The design of this program
was patterned after traditional primary care programs such as those targeted
to people with hypertension and diabetes, which had been successfully
implemented years earlier. A more detailed description of this program is
given in another paper in this issue by Alvarado et al. on the treatment of
depression in Chile.
• Developmentofadecentralizedambulatorysecondary care system with a
larger number of psychiatric outpatient facilities, especially in the form of
community mental health centers, and a larger number of day hospitals.
• Transformationofthestructureofinpatientcarewherethemainaimswere
a reduction of long-stay beds and an increase in the number of beds in acute
general hospitals and in group homes. Toward this goal, the national health
fund phased out the financing of new admissions to long-stay beds in 2001
and increased funding for community-based beds.
• Humanrightsprotectionforpersonswithmentaldisorderswithorwithout
disability. A new piece of legislation protecting the rights of persons admitted
to psychiatric facilities was enacted, and national and regional commissions
were implemented to ensure its application.
26 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MENTAL HEALTH
• Specicationoftheinputsneededtocalculateaveragecostsoftheinterventions
recommended for each mental health priority, including estimates of the
percentage of the population who would need the interventions annually,
qualifications of the staff needed to deliver the interventions, duration of the
interventions per person, and average number of interventions per person-year.
In 2004, a program of therapeutic health guarantees became law in Chile as
part of the health reform process. According to this law, both the public health care
system and the private health insurance industry must offer an explicit set of guar-
antees in terms of access, opportunity, financial coverage, and quality for fifty-six
priority diseases. The guarantees are clearly specified for each disease, including the
populations entitled to receive them, types of interventions, maximum waiting time,
minimum qualifications of the providers, and ceilings for copayments. The treatment
of schizophrenia (from first episode on), depression (age 15 and older), and substance
use disorders (below age 20) have been included among the priority diseases.
As a result of the lack of specific funding allocation, the plan’s priority related
to promotion and prevention had a low level of implementation until September
2007. That month, the Ministry of Planning in conjunction with the Ministries of
Health and Education launched a primary care-based program with a strong mental
health component aimed at fostering early child development. Its population target
included pregnant women and young children up to age four. The program was
named “Chile Grows with You” (“Chile Crece Contigo”), and it was part of the
government’s goal to improve the social welfare system.
The process of implementing the second mental health policy has not been
problem free. First, the integration of mental health activities in a traditional medi-
cal system encountered a certain amount of resistance. To address this problem,
mental health professionals from the territorial health authorities had to work hard
to persuade physicians and other professionals of the benefits of integration. Sec-
ond, the specification of priorities created a perverse incentive for the shifting of
resources from mental disorders without guarantees to priority mental disorders.
As a result, persons with other disorders had poorer access to services and poorer
quality of care. Third, specifying program goals solely on the basis of the quantity
of services—number of persons who had received the interventions or volume of
activities carried out by the primary care teams—promoted greater access to mental
health services regardless of the quality of the care provided. Fourth, because most
of the funding allocated to the implementation of the plan focused on therapeutic
interventions, the potential for primary care to engage in mental health promotion
and prevention has not been fully realized.
Evaluation of Mental Health Policies
Information from the Chilean Ministry of Health was utilized to evaluate the imple-
mentation of mental health policies in the public system during the last 20 years.
SPRING 2012 27
Available data included budget allocations for mental health, distribution of beds
across different facilities, number of visits to outpatient facilities for a mental health
condition, number of people utilizing mental health services, and participation in
a quality improvement initiative.
Mental Health Budget
Over the last 20 years, there has been a large increase in the allocation of public
sector funds for mental health from 1.3 percent of the global health budget in 1999
to 3.1 percent in 2009. At the same time, an enormous change has taken place in
the allocation of the mental health budget to different facilities (Figure 1). Most
of the new funds have been oriented to strengthening the role of outpatient and
community-based facilities in the delivery of mental health services. Between
1996 and 2009, allocation of funds increased from 2 percent to 29 percent of the
total mental health budget for primary care, from 19 percent to 30 percent for
Figure 1
Percentage of the Public Mental Health Budget Allocated Yearly to Main
Items in Chile, 1990–2009
Source: Data from the Ministry of Health.
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
199019931996 19992002200420062009
Percentage (%)
Mental hospital General hospital Outpatient center
Primary care Group homes
28 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MENTAL HEALTH
outpatient psychiatric centers, and from 1 percent to 9 percent for group homes.
While the funding for psychiatric beds in general hospitals has maintained a similar
percentage of the global mental health budget since 1990 (between 10 percent and
14 percent), the allocation of funds for mental hospitals have decreased from 74
percent in 1990 to 19 percent in 2009.
Number of Psychiatric Beds
When the first mental health policy was formulated, the large majority of psychiatric
beds in the public sector were placed in mental hospitals, and most of them were
long stay, with the lengths of stay being measured in years or decades. In 1990,
only 7 percent (n = 239) of all psychiatric beds (n = 3,399) were based in general
hospitals. By 2010, the beds’ situation was dramatically different (Figure 2). The
number of mental hospitals beds dropped by two-thirds, representing only 29 percent
of all psychiatric beds. Further, their role in the continuum of mental health care was
Figure 2
Number of Beds in Different Mental Health Facilities in Chile, 1990–2010
Source: Data from the Ministry of Health.
0
500
1,000
1,500
2,000
2,500
3,000
3,500
4,000
1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010
Mental hospitals General hospitals Group homes
Day hospitals Total
Number of beds
SPRING 2012 29
transferred to community alternatives: group homes for persons with severe mental
disability lacking family support (37.5 percent of all beds), acute psychiatric beds in
general hospitals (14 percent), and day hospitals to avoid or shorten hospitalization
stays for persons with acute severe mental disorders (20 percent).
Number of Visits to Outpatient Facilities
With the implementation of the two mental health policies, the annual number
of visits to medical doctors for a mental health condition in the public sector in-
creased progressively from 1993 to 2010 (Figure 3). The visits rate reached 99.4
per 1,000 people in 2010, indicating a substantial improvement of the public sec-
tor’s capacity to manage mental disorders in the community. Consistent with the
strategy of transforming primary care as the main provider of mental health care,
the increase in the rate of visits to general physicians has been larger than that for
psychiatrists. Since 2004, the number of mental health visits to general physicians
has been higher than that for psychiatrists, and in 2007, the number of visits to
general physicians was almost twice as large as the number of visits to psychiatrists
(Figure 3). However, since 2007, the increase of visits to general physicians has
remained constant.
Treated Incidence
The annual number of new persons starting treatment for mental disorders in the
public sector increased dramatically between 2004 and 2007 (343 percent), although
it has decreased gradually since then (Figure 4). This decrease has been mainly for
depressive disorders, mirroring the decrease in number of mental health visits to
general physicians in the same period. Depression is the most frequent reason for
seeking ambulatory mental health treatment in Chile (41 percent of treated incidence
in 2010), followed by anxiety disorders (24 percent), substance use disorders (9
percent), and attention deficit/hyperactive disorders (5 percent).
Treated Prevalence
Although the number of people receiving treatment for mental disorders in primary
and secondary care has increased significantly since the second mental health
policy was implemented in 2000, a large treatment gap remains in the Chilean
public sector (Figure 5). Assuming an estimated 12-month prevalence of mental
disorders of 22 percent [20], 73.3 percent of the beneficiary population with a
mental disorder does not receive any treatment from this system. The treatment
gap is largest for substance use disorders (91.0 percent) and lowest for depression
(55.4 percent).
The treated prevalence of depression under the explicit health guarantees sys-
tem was higher among people with no income (receiving social benefits) or low
30 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MENTAL HEALTH
income (making lower than US$379.21 per month) than among middle income
people (Figure 6). The lowest treated prevalence in the guarantees system was for
privately and self-insured people (mainly upper middle and high income). These
findings may be explained by a higher prevalence of depression among people with
low or no income, and/or better access to private mental health services among
middle and high income people.
Quality Improvement
A comprehensive quality improvement program that was aligned with aims of the
second mental health plan was implemented between 2002 and 2007. The pro-
gram included quality standards definitions, extensive Internet-based educational
programs for mental health professionals, and internal and external evaluations of
mental health facilities. A key component of this initiative was the implementation
of the principles of international accreditation programs in health care [22] aimed
at fostering a managerial culture focused on quality improvement. While this
Figure 3
Annual Number of Public Sector Visits to Medical Doctors for a Mental
Health Condition by Degree of Specialization in Chile, 1995–2010
Source: Data from the Ministry of Health.
0
100,000
200,000
300,000
400,000
500,000
600,000
700,000
800,000
900,000
Number of visits
General physician Psychiatrist
1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
SPRING 2012 31
program was operational, the following facilities developed quality improvement
plans after external evaluations:
• 89 group homes (67 percent of all the group homes)
• 42dayhospitals(100percent)
• 19outpatientcenters(53percent)
• 17communitymentalhealthcenters(68percent)
Discussion
The Chilean experience demonstrates that it is possible in a Latin American country
to implement policies that radically transform psychiatric services and narrow the
mental health treatment gap. Throughout the implementation process, multiple
initiatives either facilitated or hindered the achievement of the service development
objectives defined by the two mental health national plans. Among the facilitating
factors, international cooperation was one of the most significant. Following the
Caracas Declaration, PAHO provided continuous technical and financial support
to most American countries for strategic local initiatives. After a few years, the
Figure 4
Annual Number of New Persons Starting Treatment for Different Mental
Disorders, Public Sector Primary Care, in Chile, 2004–2010
Source: Data from the Ministry of Health.
0
50,000
100,000
150,000
200,000
250,000
2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
Number of persons
Depression
Anxiety
Substance
ADHD
Other
32 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MENTAL HEALTH
experience of several Latin American and Caribbean countries with policy, legisla-
tion, service reforms, and development [2] generated a sense of collective learning,
catalyzed by PAHO, which was very helpful for the Chilean process.
Like most other countries, Chile ratified the United Nations International
Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, which provides the most
comprehensive article on the right to health in international human rights law. In ac-
cordance with Article 12.1 of this Covenant, parties recognize “the right of everyone
to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.”
In 2000, the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
(CESCR) interpreted this article through General Comment 14, stating that “the
right to health is not to be understood as a right to be healthy … the right to health
must be understood as a right to the enjoyment of a variety of facilities, goods, serv-
ices and conditions necessary for the realization of the highest attainable standard
of health” [23]. Because the right to mental health is one of the aspects of health
most prone to transgression, we discuss the lessons and challenges of the 20-year
Chilean experience with mental health policies following the essential elements of
the right to health defined by the CESCR in the General Comment 14: availability,
accessibility, acceptability, and quality.
Figure 5
Number of People Under Treatment and Gap for Mental Disorders in Chile,
2010
Sources: Data from the Ministry of Health and adapted from [20, 21].
-
500,000
1,000,000
1,500,000
2,000,000
2,500,000
3,000,000
55.4%
91.0%
77.6%
71.5%
73.3%
Number of persons
Treatment gap
Persons treated
Depression Substance Schizophrenia
Any medical
disorder
ADHD
SPRING 2012 33
Availability
The Chilean policies have demonstrated that a middle income country can ad-
equately address this issue through two strategies: investment of small yet gradu-
ally increasing proportions of the global health budget on mental health services
and allocation of new funds to develop geographically accessible decentralized
services that meet people’s diverse needs. Among these services, Chilean policies
have stressed the relevance of primary care for the treatment of common mental
disorders (depression and anxiety); specialized outpatient centers to support primary
care teams and to treat people with severe mental disorders; day hospitals and psy-
chiatric beds in general hospitals to manage acutely ill persons and severe crises;
and group homes to address the need for social supports for persons with severe
mental disability, enabling them to exert their right to live in the community.
Figure 6
Percentage of People Treated for Depression by Income Level (Explicit
Guarantees in Public and Private Insurance) in Chile, 2008
Source: Data from the Ministry of Health.
0.0
0.5
1.0
1.5
2.0
2.5
3.0
3.5
4.0
No
income*
Low* Low
middle*
Middle* High
middle**
% of persons
Income level
*public insurance **private insurance
34 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MENTAL HEALTH
It is up for debate whether Chile has in fact developed a “sufficient quantity”
of public mental health services and programs, according to the spirit of United
Nation’s General Comment 14. No international standard exists that defines what
is sufficient, so this benchmark may be variably interpreted. Is it sufficient, for
example, to allocate 3.1 percent of the general health budget to mental health?
Although it may be considered insufficient given the 2010 goal of 5 percent set in
the second national plan of 2000, a percentage arrived at upon by calculating the
cost of the priority interventions identified in the plan, it could be considered suf-
ficient when compared with the budgetary situation of many other middle income
countries [24].
Accessibility
The dramatic increase in the rates of treated incidence and treated prevalence for the
most frequent mental health conditions suggests that the access-focused strategies
pursued by the Chilean government have been effective. The Chilean approach to
improving accessibility to mental health services provides a model for countries
looking for similar results. The health guarantees system has had an especially
remarkable effect on access for treating depression among low income people.
However, after 20 years of relatively successful mental health policies, the treatment
gap remains relatively high and is still a major challenge for the future.
Acceptability
No data is available at the Ministry of Health regarding the acceptability of mental
health services to the general population, by gender and minority status. Future
policies should aim to develop gender-, cultural-, and age-appropriate services. It
will also be important to incorporate this dimension in the data collected by the
public information system.
Quality
Although the quality improvement program that was implemented jointly with
the second plan received positive evaluations by mental health teams and it led to
improved quality of care, it did not receive political or funding support to continue
beyond 2007. Currently, quality is not just a major challenge for mental health
but for the whole public health system in Chile. Among the most critical quality
challenges are early discontinuation of treatment among persons with depression
or schizophrenia (see the two papers by Alvarado et al. in this issue), and under-
use of guideline-concordant psychosocial interventions by both primary care and
specialized teams. These quality problems may be related to deficiencies regarding
quantitative and qualitative development of human resources with relevant skills to
community mental health care. Despite being a major employer of these resources,
SPRING 2012 35
the public health system has not yet managed to decisively influence the training
they receive. One of the limitations of this paper is the paucity of country-specific
evidence on the mental health effects of the country’s larger social forces. Future
policy research should consider the impact of the country’s fast and unequal eco-
nomic development on the mental health of the population.
Conclusions
The Chilean experience with mental health policies in the public sector has been
successful in terms of increasing availability and accessibility of services, con-
tributing to humanely meeting the mental health needs of the population. With a
modicum of political support and a very modest budget, principles and models
exist and international cooperation is available for countries to implement an
effective and efficient community-based network of primary and secondary care
facilities.
Key factors that have contributed to the improvement of mental health ser-
vices in Chile include the strong public network of health facilities that serves
more than 70 percent of the population, the political commitment to narrow
the treatment gap for mental disorders, epidemiological and services research
conducted at universities and at the Ministry of Health, and strong advocacy by
several stakeholders. Notwithstanding the progress made in this country, the
mental health treatment gap is still significant. Critical areas of unmet need are
the mental health care of children, adolescents, and native peoples; mental health
promotion and prevention; and employment and social inclusion of persons with
mental disability.
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