New political commitments to mental health reform led the government to pass the Mental Health Act in 1997 to promote community-based mental health care; a wide variety of community-based mental health services have been made available, with emphasis on services for prevention, early treatment, rehabilitation and home care; advocacy from the health workforce motivated reforms and helped define the vision for care transformations; strategic timing was an important contributing factor in achieving political support for mental health reform; partnerships with NGOs and volunteer organizations helped expand the continuum of mental health care.
