Community mental health services in Israel: current status and future trends in light of the Netanyahu Commission recommendations and the National Health Insurance Law.

The purpose of this article is to describe the current status of community mental health services and to examine the changes and difficulties projected as a result of the adoption of the Netanyahu Commission's recommendations and the implementation of the National Health Insurance Law. Although reform has been necessary for quite some time, particularly in the area of community mental health services, that fact does not obviate the need to raise certain questions concerning the ramifications of such change. In this article, we have attempted to focus on both the present and the future, in the following areas: organizational structure; budget; underlying concepts and ideology of community mental health services; target populations and professional personnel slated to implement the recommendations.