Carla Aliño | Valencia (EFE) mild anxiety or depression.
Until now, these patients were cared for by primary care doctors, who normally prescribed an anxiolytic or antidepressant to alleviate symptoms, and referred them to overflow mental health units.
A psychologist for each basic health area
The Generalitat has launched an action plan for Mental Health, Drug Addiction and Addictive Behaviors which, among other objectives and until 2026, seeks to reinforce the basic health areas of the Valencian Community with a clinical psychologist or nurse specialized in mental health.
This is explained to EFE by the commissioner of the Presidency of the Generalitat for this plan, Rafael Tabares, who points out that last year the first 36 clinical psychologists and nurses were hired to reinforce the primary care teams, and this year has already started the hiring process of many others.
And it will continue like this until covering, in 2026, the 216 basic health areas that the Community has, in order to “lend a hand” to the primary care teams, and care for those citizens who have emotional or health problems. mild mental health problems and go to their health centers to find a solution.
At least one psychologist in each health center
In addition, the 2023 Budget Support Law included a modification to the Valencian health law to establish the guarantee of at least one clinical psychologist in each primary care health center.
Tabares affirms that Primary Care “is the first gateway to mental health problems and emotional discomfort”, but many times the professionals of this service “cannot dedicate the time or the attention that these people need”.
This causes “deficient care” and sometimes “excessive medicalization” of patients, when, in his opinion, with adequate care and time, many times, “medicalization” of these problems should not be necessary. .
A major demand
Since the first psychologists and specialized nurses began to work in Valencian health centers in the summer of 2022, the demand for this service is being “very important” and exceeding expectations, to the point that not only are the work schedules, but there is already a waiting list.
And it is that these professionals basically attend to “life problems”, those that could be considered as “emotional discomfort”, and also mild anxiety and depression, all of them problems that have increased among the population since the pandemic.
This specialized care in Primary Care prevents many of these people from having to be referred to mental health units, which are “very overwhelmed” attending to this type of symptomatology, which takes time away from treating serious mental illness, he explained to EFE. the coordinator of the Mental Health Service of the Ministry of Health, Francisco Pérez.
Lack of professionals
The problem that the Ministry is encountering when it comes to expanding recruitment, according to Pérez, is that there are not enough professionals, since in the last year some 200 professionals have joined the health system in different calls.
As highlighted, after the start of the pandemic in 2020, numerous reinforcement covid contracts were signed, including more than a hundred for mental health specialists, which ended up becoming vacancies and were filled between May and June 2022.
In addition, there were another 69 more contracts within the framework of a crash plan for children’s mental health, because “a pandemic of self-harm and suicidal ideation among adolescents is taking place, and there is a tremendous increase in demand.”
With these contracts, the ratio in the Valencian Community is now around six professionals per 100,000 inhabitants, with which this autonomy has managed to come close to the Spanish ratio, but it is still very far from other countries of the European Union or the recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO), which speaks of twenty professionals per 100,000 inhabitants.
Reach international rates
In any case, the Commissioner for Mental Health ensures that with the hiring of 2022, those scheduled for 2023 and those contemplated in the 2023-2026 action plan, the Community will reach the rates recommended by international organizations.
For his part, the coordinator of the Ministry of Health highlights that this action by the Generalitat is being “very important”, since since the beginning of the 90s, after the closure of psychiatric hospitals and the creation of mental health units, There had been “virtually no increase” in resources.
He affirms that the more than 200 professionals hired by the Generalitat represent an increase of more than 20% compared to what there was until now, going from about 1,100 professionals to more than 1,400.
Valencian psychologists, satisfied
From the Official College of Psychologists of the Valencian Community, its dean, Francisco Santolaya, affirms to EFE that “I wish it were tomorrow”, but he sees the term of three or four years “quite well” to carry out the action plan for Health Mental.
“The gateway to the public health system is primary care, so logically psychologists should be there working,” he says, while also calling for the creation of a specialty of educational psychologists.
Santolaya considers it necessary for these professionals to provide services in educational centers, since they are the ones who “are trained to detect those first symptoms or indicators of suicide attempts in young people.” EFE