ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to indicate some of the main problem areas in the community care field in the light of British experience. When the history of the world mental health movement comes to be written—and there is a task here worthy of a new Arnold Toynbee or a future Max Weber—one of the fundamental themes must be the development of the concept of community care. In Britain, the view that the institution was the right place for the mentally disordered, both for their own protection and for that of society, was dominant right through the nineteenth century. The Mental Health Act of 1959 changed the situation decisively. This act was the result of a royal commission that saw a great and expanding future for community care and a dwindling role for the hospital. Psychiatrists sometimes feel impatient at the mention of cost and financing, arguing that cost does not matter as long as the patient gets the best possible service.
