ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by outlining problems with current approaches to the delivery of secondary mental healthcare. These services are often experienced as coercive and inflexible and seem insufficiently focused on addressing the problems that are prioritised by the patients who use them. One limitation of current approaches to secondary mental healthcare, it is argued, is a lack of coherent theoretical principles underpinning the design and delivery of these services. Perceptual Control Theory (PCT), a theory of human behaviour that is based on the principles of negative feedback control, is introduced. We propose that PCT could provide the theoretical basis for the delivery of secondary mental healthcare. The theory has applications at all levels of the mental healthcare system, including the approach taken by individual practitioners, service commissioning and design, and the creation of healthcare policy. The chapter concludes with an overview of the book.
