Mental health policy and practice across Europe: an overview

238 Mental health policy and practice
Figure 10.1 Total psychiatric beds and psychiatric beds in mental hospitals per 10,000
population in the 25 EU member states
* Data on psychiatric beds in mental hospitals not available.
degree of obligation on individual provinces to fulfil stipulated requirements.
These include a few pages on psychiatry, with a subsection on community services.
This plan is continuously adapted (latest version January 2001) and contains
suggestions for the establishment of psychiatric units in general hospitals.
However, up to now, only a few such units exist, with some others in the planning
stage.
Greece developed a ten-year national plan for mental health that was submitted
for financial assistance to the EU in 1997 (Psychoargos), part of which has
already been approved and is now in progress. The main points of this plan are:
the continuation of deinstitutionalization and destigmatization; sectorization
of psychiatric services throughout the country; continuation of the development
of primary health care units and psychiatric units in general hospitals;
continuation and intensification of the development of rehabilitation facilities;
establishment and development of patient cooperatives in order to promote the
social, economic and occupational reintegration into society of patients with
severe psychiatric problems; and establishment of detailed guarantees and procedures
for the protection of patients’ rights. During the period 2000–6, there
has been a special emphasis on the areas of child psychiatry, psychogeriatrics
and the reform of psychiatric hospitals (WHO 2001b). Plans are also underway
in Ireland to further develop community-based services and to organize services
for the disturbed mentally ill.
In Italy, the 1978 reform law inaugurated fundamental changes in the mental
health care system (prohibiting admissions to state mental hospitals, stipulating
community-based services, allowing hospitalization only in small general hospital
units) and the year 1998 marked the end of the state mental hospital