ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the development of mental health services and the place of community mental health nursing in the high-income countries. The shift from institutional care, which commenced following the Second World War, will be mapped, alongside discussion of how this shift changed the role of nurses. The chapter focuses on the role of mental health nurses and developments in the craft of caring within this context. It examines the socio-cultural environment in which mental health nurses work within higher-income countries. By the 1950s, there were a number of socioeconomic and political developments that made the evolution of alternative systems of mental health care possible. These included the development of phenothiazine medications, as well as other pharmacological initiatives. Additionally, increases in the costs of institutional care and the overcrowding of asylums occurred, coinciding with the evolution of the consumer movement.
