Making rhetoric a reality: effective capacity building in mental health care provision

Patients diagnosed with mental illness are statistically less likely to access physical healthcare services, resulting in increased mortality rates and diminished quality and decreased longevity of lifespan. This article identifies key aspects of the need for capacity building in, and between, all professional healthcare disciplines and utilizes a clinical case study to demonstrate the relevance of basic psychosocial interventions to all healthcare professionals. Alongside the practicalities of mental healthcare provision within the context of 21st-century society, discussion is extended to two basic theoretical models for understanding the relationship of mental illness to factors over which there can be no intraneous or conscious control. In this sense, the portrayal of patients with mental illness first and foremost as people whose somewhat transient demise from general wellbeing serves only to brand and stigmatize them from the point of diagnosis as fundamentally different to others. Mechanisms of how these stark rhetorical issues may be altered through building on the concept of therapeutic alliance with appropriately designed and insightful pathways of development for multidisciplinary healthcare teams aptly conclude the article.