“…In Britain the unprecedented degree of criticism faced by the existing mental health services can be gauged by the articles appearing in their defence in the British literature, partially in reaction to the Government's announcement that community care has failed (Tyrer, 1998b;Burns & Priebe, 1999) and increasingly restricted measures are proposed, such as supervised discharge, etc. There are even pleas to abandon the term community psychiatry because``what started as an ideal has become an excuse for buck passing, asset stripping and skimping on provisions'' (Robertson, 1994). However, the concept of so-called community psychiatry as it is practised in the developing world seems to be quite effective and appropriate for the populations it is supposed to serve (Goldberg, 1987(Goldberg, , 1992.…”