[For a mental health policy.]

At the point of civilization where we find ourselves today, in the post-modernity conditions, the responsibility of civil society is a determining factor in the overall politic of mental health. More than ever we have to think of health and mental health in particular in terms of a social dynamics where the participation of social groups and individuals in the responsibility for collective health has priority over the structures of state and institutional interventions. The responsibilities of the state, the institutions and professionals are therefore displaced and redefined while new rights emerge and with them the need for more information and control for the users who pay for health services with their taxes. The concern to adapt a system now anachronistic can only increases the problems of a society responsible for its obsolescence. The social and human costs of the radical changes needed, will in the short term, be socially less burdensome than the consequences of illusory adaptations. In this area, we can expect that nothing will be effective without the mobilisation by the state of the collective responsabilities for a social involvement in public health.