Foreword

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It is with great pleasure that we bring you Mental Health, United States, 2002. Our Nation has made great strides in recent years in achieving recovery for persons with mental illnesses. We know much more about how to deliver recovery-oriented mental health care, improve service quality, achieve desired improvements in quality of life outcomes, and implement needed care systems in each community in America. Our vision is a life in the community for everyone.

Current efforts, however, are far from complete. Many individuals find the services they need to be inaccessible, through distance, cost, or coverage limitations. Others are able to access services, but the services may not be fully evidence based, of the highest quality, respectful of the recipient's culture, race, and ethnicity, or recovery oriented.

The Report of the President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health, Achieving the Promise: Transforming Mental Health Care in America, points the way for us to make great progress in achieving our shared goal of lives of productivity and family and community engagement for people with or at risk for mental illnesses and their families. The specific steps recommended in that report, indeed, have the power to help us transform mental health care in America to the benefit of millions.

Mental Health, United States, 2002 adds to our knowledge base, helps guide our program and policy direction, and helps us identify where we need to correct our course toward system transformation in mental health care. We hope you will find many uses for the information contained in this volume and that you will join in our goal of helping all Americans with mental illnesses realize healthy, contributing lives in their communities nationwide.

Charles G. Curie, M.A., A.C.S.W., Administrator
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration

A. Kathryn Power, M.Ed., Director
Center for Mental Health Services

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