Who is interested in the quality of everyday psychiatric care?

In the past 50 years the treatment possibilities have drastically improved, but the treatment results achieved under everyday care conditions mainly lag far behind those that could actually be achieved. This efficacy-effectiveness gap is at present the main obstacle to achieving optimal outcome in psychiatry. In this editorial, several causative factors for this gap are named and suggestions are made as to what should be done to fulfill the outcome that is achievable according to today's state of knowledge. Estimates indicate that at least a 25% improvement of important outcome indicators (e.g. yearly relapse rates) could be achieved.