{
  "id": 14374796,
  "title": "Shifting mental health care to communities",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/14/shifting-mental-health-care-to-communities",
  "topic": "health",
  "section": "Health & Medicine",
  "published": "2026-10-14T05:12:12.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "The Jakarta Post",
    "slug": "the-jakarta-post",
    "url": "https://www.thejakartapost.com/opinion/2026/10/14/shifting-mental-health-care-to-communities.html"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Mental health care is transitioning from institutional settings to community-based services, with growing recognition of human rights and dignity for individuals living with mental health conditions. Over the past two decades, several countries, like Sri Lanka, have made significant progress in transforming their mental health systems from asylum-based models to decentralized networks of district and community services. Community-based mental health care promotes recovery through appropriate housing, education, employment, social protection, person-centered care, and access to essential supports like housing, education, employment, social protection, peer support, social connection, education, employment, legal aid, and family support. Discharging patients without continuity of care is counterproductive, and people should be welcomed into supportive communities. International guidance from the World Health Organization emphasizes the need for a cultural shift, involving people with lived experience, health providers, and society as a whole in this transition.",
  "summary": "Millions remain locked away in psychiatric institutions under the guise of care—it is time to replace outdated confinement with dignity, community support, and fundamental human rights.",
  "key_points": [
    "Mental health care moving from institutions to community-based services",
    "Countries like Sri Lanka transforming systems to decentralized networks",
    "Community-based care promotes recovery through housing, education, employment"
  ],
  "editors_take": "Moving toward decentralized networks prioritizes human dignity by replacing isolated asylum models with holistic support systems that integrate patients into the social fabric of their local communities.",
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}