Mental health service delivery in Ontario, Canada: how do policy legacies shape prospects for reform?

Like many jurisdictions, mental health policy-making in Ontario, Canada, has a long history of frustrated attempts to move from a hospital and physician-based tradition to a coordinated system with greater emphasis on community-based mental health care. This study examines policy legacies associated with the introduction of psychiatric hospitals in the 1850s and of public health insurance (medicare) in the 1960s in Ontario; and their effect on …