The new mental health strategy arouses misgivings in the sector

The Minister of Health, Carolina Darias, presented this Friday to the Council of Ministers the Mental health strategy for the period 2022-2026, approved on Thursday in the Interterritorial Council. Although he has considered that it is a fundamental advance to put mental health in the “epicenter of policies and make these diseases visible”, psychiatric societies they distrust of the new roadmap, which does not include a budget or a minimum ratio of professionals, waiting lists or number of beds.

However, Darias has argued that it will be the action plans that develop the strategy that have a budget and recalled that Pedro Sánchez promised, to overcome the mental damage caused by the pandemic, a endowment of 100 million until 2023. And, as Darias has defended, mental health is a “latent threat” that has been increased by the virus and, therefore, is the “challenge of today and tomorrow.”

The Strategy is based on 10 pillars whose goal is to “improve patient autonomy, reduce stigma and limit involuntary interventions“. Contemplate for the first time a specific section dedicated to suicide, which is the leading cause of external death and one of the main public health problems. In 2020 there were 3,941 deaths, with a rate of 8.3 per 100,000 inhabitants.

The Strategy promotes the training of professionals in detecting the risk of suicidal behavior, raising awareness or developing a network of telephone attention. Likewise, it contemplates for the first time the gender perspective.

The critics

The development of the Strategy has been full of difficulties. There were several previous attempts that failed due to division in the profession and a lack of consensus and political momentum. That is why Darias has valued that on this occasion it has been prepared by a multidisciplinary committee, it has been unanimously approved by the communities and 25 entities have participated in it. “We wanted to integrate all the voices. It has been too long, but I am convinced that thanks to this shared Strategy we will go further & rdquor ;, he highlighted.

Although, the autonomous and monographic psychiatric societies (specialized in a specific area of ​​psychiatry) have not wanted to count as consulted, as explained Gemma Parramon, president of the Catalan Society. And it is that Health consulted them a short time before approving the strategy and without time to incorporate their contributions. And the Spanish Society of Psychiatry It appears in the text as consulted but that does not mean that it provides its endorsement, according to its president, Celso arango.

Vagueness

Arango explains that the previous versions of the Strategy were “worse” because they did not have an action plan with a budget. But even so, the 100 million announced by Sánchez are “insufficient” and the roadmap suffers from “lack from ambition“because it does not contemplate any type of ratio that allows setting” where you want to go. “For this reason, in his opinion, it is a document” full of vagueness and little operational “.

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In turn, the Catalan Society considers that the document is plagued with euphemisms“To avoid talking about mental disorder, which, in Parramon’s opinion, is” stigmatizing. “Likewise, the document is committed to avoiding hospitalizations but does not promote the creation of alternative resources nor does it contain an evaluation of the results.