Treatment, Care, and Rehabilitation of the Chronic Mentally Ill in Sweden

For the last 20 years in Sweden, there has been a trend to integrate psychiatry with general medical services. However, mental hospitals remain the dominant resource for psychiatric care, with psychiatric units in general hospitals providing less than 20 percent of psychiatric hospital beds. The imbalance between the high number of inpatient facilities and the low rate of outpatient visits is beginning to be corrected by the newly introduced sector system, which allocates mental health care resources among geographic zones. The sector system has been criticized, however, because some believe it is fostering disintegration of existing resources and loss of research opportunities. A general spirit of improvement exists, but at the same time the public budget is being squeezed.