Completing the unfinished revolution in mental health

Hot on the heels of the new coalition government’s mental health strategy for England comes a report on mental health in the United Kingdom, written by the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), called Completing the Revolution: Transforming Mental Health and Tackling Poverty.1 The CSJ is an independent think tank that was established in 2004 by Iain Duncan Smith (a Conservative Party politician who is now a cabinet minister). The report is sponsored by the Doha International Institute for Family Studies and Development, Partnerships in Care (a for-profit provider of secure mental health facilities), and St Andrew’s Healthcare (a charity that provides mental healthcare). The striking headline of the report is that, “There is an unfinished revolution in mental health care that began half a century ago when the mentally ill were moved out of asylums . . . to help them achieve as full a recovery as possible, but this shift has stalled and many needs currently go unmet.”

The review is the culmination of written and oral evidence collected over the course of more than a year, and it sets out 38 recommendations across six areas: …