Abstract:

The mental health policy of Turkey has been undergoing a transformation process since 2006. This change aims to prioritize the establishment of community-based mental health care services and to organize an accessible mental healthcare service network across the country. The main objective is to analyse the politics of mental health policy change in Turkey and to understand the role of user groups in this process by a qualitative analysis of the views of mental health user groups on these transformations. In this context, semi‐structured interviews were conducted with representatives (n = 13) of patient organisations based in Istanbul, Ankara and İzmir. This article reveals that this policy change took the form of the balanced care model, and the introduction of community-based mental health care centers provided to increase the utilization of mental health care services. However, the services in community-based settings were questioned by the respondents due to their purely medical approach to users' recovery processes and this policy change falls short of introducing a holistic perspective to the Turkish mental health care system that would facilitate recovery not only through medical support but also through social support that would empower individuals living with mental health issues.

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