[Contemporary system of mental health care: epidemiologic aspects]

The authors suppose that adequate mental health care management should be based on the knowledge about the number of its potential patients. In order to determine this number the authors formulated a hypothesis that the necessary period of the observation of patients depends on the course of the disease and on the risk of the relapse. From the authors' point of view all mental disorders comprise 3 groups. Patients who belong to the 1-st group need observation during all their life; patients from the 2-nd group need observation during an active period of the illness; patients from the 3-d group need observation during the acute period only. On the basis of estimation of the full number of mentally ill people in Russia the authors calculate a size of each group and the total number of the potential patients--about 21 million of people (14% of the Russian population). This rate has been defined as "the actual number of mental patients".