The Future of Psychiatry: the next 25 years

Major socioeconomic trends - including rapid urbanization, internal and international migration, changes of value systems, digitalization as well as changes of the demographic and family structure - place new tasks before psychiatry as a medical discipline and before mental health care programs as its field of work. To be able to face its new challenges it will be necessary to change the way in which psychiatrists are selected and educated, examine and possibly revise legal provisions concerning the care for the mentally ill and accept to deal with diseases comorbid with mental disorders. Psychiatry will also have to find effective ways of using knowledge about mental illness and mental health in settings such as that of perinatal care, and other frameworks of preventive and other public health intervenitions.