[Psychiatry, Crises and Policies]

From the perspective of global societal crises, this paper discusses the long-term socio-political withdrawal of psychiatry into a self-defined position of therapy- and rehabilitation-oriented medicine with no responsibility for social, economic or political conditions. Global crises suggest mental health and overall resilience of the population as key societal resources. Only mental health and psychosocial resilience of people and societies worldwide will determine whether our answers to the current and future existential threats will be effective. This challenge requires a radical change of attitudes of both society and psychiatry. The rich expertise of psychiatry, e. g. on on how to balance autonomy and compulsion or regarding the interdependencies of cognition and human behaviour must contribute significantly to the socio-political debate and the fight against undesirable social or political developments.