Responses to nervous breakdowns in America over a 40-year period: Mental health policy implications.

examine the policy implications of people's responses to feeling an impending nervous breakdown. Questions about problems in modern living were added to the GSS to provide a profile of the public's view of mental health problems. Results were compared for 1957, 1976, and 1996. In 1957, 19 % of respondents had experienced an impending nervous breakdown; in 1996, 26 % had had this experience. Between 1957 and 1996, participants in-creased their use of informal social supports, decreased their use of physicians, and increased their use of nonmed-ical mental health professionals. These findings support policies that strengthen informal support seeking and ac-cess to effective psychosocial treatments rather than cur-rent mental health reimbursement practices, which empha-size the role of primary care physicians. ~ uestions concerning the public's response to mental health problems have been informed in previous generations by the Americans View