Global Issues

Mental Health Crisis in Greece

Latest reports from the BBC on the appalling conditions in the Greek Mental Health System

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8124976.stm

We are informed by our international colleagues of the deteriorating situation and appalling conditions in the mental health services in Greece. After shocking revelations about the Leros Asylum were made public in the 1980’s the international outcry produced funding to reform the system from the European Union. Some hospitals closed and some community services developed. However over the past three years Government funding to these has slowed and stopped, staff are not being paid, the services can’t meet their expenses and the quality is deteriorating. The feared outcome is that the institutions will reopen. 

In late January 2009 the European Union held a meeting to discuss the deteriorating situation in Greece the  notes of that meeting make shocking reading from the relative comfort of New Zealand.

A blog translated into English provides detail of the situation. http://psi-action-en.blogspot.com/

England

New strategy to bolster mental health care  - Radical plans to prioritise mental health – putting it on a par with the fight against obesity – will be launched this week by the English Government . For the first time, reducing the toll that mental illness takes on people and the public purse will become the responsibility of every government department