Integrating Services, Marginalizing Patients

Psychiatric Patients and Primary Health Care in South Africa

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2394414
AutoresL Swartz (0000-0003-1741-5897, Stellenbosch University), Hayley Macgregor (0000-0002-9392-9331, University of Cambridge)
Año2002
Volumen39
Número2
Páginas155-172
Fecha de publicación2002-06-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaTranscultural Psychiatry (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1363-4615 • E-ISSN: 1461-7471
EditorialSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/136346150203900202
OpenAlexW2122030828
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas7
Referencias citadas22

In keeping with international trends, South African health policy is moving towards comprehensive primary health care, with mental health care offered as integral to this service. This move is consonant with other moves towards integration in a formerly divided country. We consider some ideological bases for the move towards integration, and the consequences for psychiatric patients. We show how the specialist terrain of the mental health nurse has been recast as focusing primarily on violence, substance abuse and HIV/AIDS rather than on psychiatric care. Using case material to illustrate our argument we suggest that integrating mental health care into the primary health care system may have unintended negative consequences for patients. The argument has implications for services in other poorly resourced and postconflict societies

Family medicine · Health care · Mental health · Political science · Primary care · Psychiatry · Child and Adolescent Health · Medicine · Mental Health Treatment and Access · Migration, Health and Trauma · Nursing · Psychology