Given the current implementation of mental health parity in insurance benefits and the enactment of healthcare reform, this book is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand both the historical context of public psychiatry and what the future might hold.

Most people with serious mental illness are seen in the public sector of psychiatry, and the significance of psychiatric treatment in the public sector is best understood one person at a time.

This book tells the story of public psychiatry with examples from the author’s experience running Connecticut Mental Health Center (CMHC), one of the US’s premier public mental health centres.