ABSTRACT
Mental health care has experienced a variety of disparate trends including the biomedicalization of practice, evidence-based care, the privatization of services, the emergence and dominance of managed care programs, and the carving of psychiatric care into smaller commodified services. The chapter demonstrates how these seemingly unrelated elements have an underlying coherency that has been driven largely by political economic and ideological factors. Neoliberalism has been identified as a key driver of the shifts in mental health policy. Through its influence on economic policies and ideology, neoliberalism has directly impacted patients, their families, and communities. Neoliberalism contravenes many of the traditional principles of community mental health, and it further commodifies and distorts some of its elements such as the recovery model. The chapter provides a critical assessment of the most widely used modalities in mental health care, research, and policy, and shows how they have been influenced by political economy and neoliberal ideology.
