Guaranteeing the sustainability of public health, the challenges posed by psychiatric care and the new tools available to professionals were discussed at the start of the conference “Health of the future: innovation and trends”, organized by elDiario.es with the participation of experts and professionals and in which the Minister of Health, Mónica García, participated in a conversation with the director of elDiario.es, Ignacio Escolar.
Today and tomorrow, primary care must be the “heart” of a public health system which is a “luxury”, underlined the minister, before a debate table on the present and future of mental health in the context that participants reflected on. on the growing needs of society in this area.
The degradation of the first stage of health care has no culprits, according to García, but rather those responsible. A nuance which does not hide that in certain cases “the bad faith of those who do not believe in the public system”, he underlined. García highlighted the social determinants of health as a determining factor in the prevalence of mental pathologies in recent years, an issue that was discussed in depth in the first panel of the day, Present and Future of Mental Health. The government commissioner for mental health, Belén González, did not put on hot water. Social situations such as difficulties in accessing housing and job insecurity have overwhelmed the aid system to the point of overflowing it, to the point that it is now “broken”.
“We professionals are overwhelmed,” said Mayelin Rey, a clinical psychologist at Madrid’s Ramón y Cajal Hospital and board member of the region’s psychology faculty. In this sense, we mentioned the low rate of professionals per capita in Spain, six per 100,000 inhabitants, compared to 12 to 18 in other neighboring countries. The diagnosis is shared by Santiago Pérez, director of the psychology unit at HLA Montpellier hospital and psychologist at HLA Moncloa hospital. “There is a spillover even in the private sector,” he said.
“We have more resources than before, but they are not enough,” recognized Daniel Navarro, technical coordinator of mental health at Clariane Spain, during an online intervention with his table companions and in what circumstances such as the need to manage expectations of the effects of drugs, the need to strengthen community work and introduce psychological care in primary school or the risk of medicalizing normal situations such as sadness due to bereavement in the face of the rise of information and citizens’ interest in mental health.
