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During the 1990s, important shifts took place in Swedish welfare policies. Universal benefits and services still constitute basic form of social protection, but significant retrenchments have occurred in the universal part of the Swedish system. Compensation levels in social security benefits have been lowered and entitlement criteria have been tightened. Such developments have been paralleled by an emphasis on activation measures in social policies. In this respect, Swedish disability policies reflect a shift towards a stronger 'deservingness ethic'. Another tendency has been the introduction of more selective social and civil rights, especially in disability policies. Relevant examples are the introduction of the Disability Reform in 1994 which was aimed at people with large and persistent difficulties in managing their daily lives, the Disability Ombudsman, and anti-discrimination legislation which aimed to protect disabled job-seekers and employees. The major changes in social security, social assistance and health services in the 1990s, as well as developments in disability services, are described in historical perspective. Statutory services which target those among the disabled who are most 'deserving' have enhanced the substantive rights of this group. However, changes in the universal welfare system towards greater selectivism indicate that new barriers have been raised for disabled people.

The majority of studies related to the needs of individuals with psychiatric disabilities focus on their meeting with, and use of, the traditional mental health system. Environmentally relative conceptions of disability have only shown limited success in expanding the views of the field of community psychiatry to include social and organizational contexts. Swedish disability policy emphasizes the individual's ability to participate in community life and may therefore be said to reflect a social approach to disability, in contrast to an exclusively medical perspective that focuses on deficits and the individual's need for psychiatrically defined services. In this study, inventories of need for people with psychiatric disabilities, a legislated responsibility of the social service system in Sweden, were completed for three municipalities. Results indicated that these individuals resist psychiatrically defined categories as they seek supports based on their own experience of need in the community.