The director of the national mental health program announced on Thursday that reform of services in this area will be completed in “three or four years”, including the creation of the 40 community teams envisioned in the recovery and resilience plan.
“This will all be done in three or four years, not sooner. The 40 teams will be formed and the rest of the country will be reorganized. I don’t think it’s too optimistic to predict something like that”said Miguel Xavier at the hearing in the mental health working group of the parliamentary health committee.
He believes that mental health care should be multidisciplinary, involving teams of psychologists, nurses, occupational therapists and social workers.
Miguel Xavier argued that community team development is already done through the “increase in the number of people”, after the inclusion in the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR) of the creation of 40 of these teams, some of which have already been established.
“It’s a lot of people, there are again 300 people working in mental health care” and which will be distributed among mainland Portugal’s five health regions – North, Centre, Lisbon and Tagus Valley, Alentejo and Algarve, the national director said.
Of these 40 teams, 20 are intended to work with adults and the remaining 20 with children and adolescents, which will also be distributed according to the “sites most in need of staff,” he added.
According to Miguel Xavier, in addition to the teams provided by the PRR, and in order to prevent the country from having a “dual system” in the provision of mental health care, it was necessary “transform the resources that already exist, reorganize them, in the sense of taking the form of community teams”.
“That’s what’s being done this year,” including through training for these new teams, Miguel Xavier told delegates.
The mental health reform that the government aims to complete by the end of 2026 makes use of EUR 88 million for investments in this area, available under the PRR.
Planned hospital care measures include the construction of four new inpatient units in general hospitals and the elimination of admissions of acutely ill patients in psychiatric hospitals.
Source: DN
