The number of cases of depression and suicide in Poland is increasing. “Psychiatry in our country has nothing to offer patients” – says prof. Bartosz Łoza, an outstanding psychiatrist in an interview with Medonet. This is about to change. On July 28st, the Ministry of Health starts a pilot program in Centers of Mental Health. The package of guaranteed benefits in XNUMX centers will include the environmental help of a psychiatrist and psychologist. Will it be as beautiful as on paper? Time will tell.
- The pilot program of the Ministry of Health is a response to the fact that more and more Poles suffer from depression, and already every fifth child has mental disorders
- From 1 July 2028, in 28 centers (hospitals and clinics) throughout Poland, patients will be able to take advantage of not only a free visit to a psychiatrist and psychotherapy, also at home. Help is to be provided XNUMX hours a day, seven days a week. – After all, in the constitution, every Pole is guaranteed XNUMX/XNUMX medical assistance. A psychologist and psychiatrist has always been free. You cannot give again what is given – says prof. Bartosz Łoza. So the project looks more like marketing than real help
- The program is to focus mainly on community psychiatric care, child and adolescent psychiatry and care for people with addictions. Unfortunately, there are no therapists specialized in such care
- The danger is also that district centers will delay sending the patient to a hospital or other specialist center outside the region. Because due to billing issues, it will cause an “outflow” of money – fears prof. Bartosz Łoza.
- Psychiatry is still being spared in Poland. Every year we hear that there is more money. Yes, but everyone gets more and for years psychiatry has been getting around 3,5 percent of the pool that can be distributed among all areas of treatment. It’s actually less and less. Because more and more people need help not because they are mentally ill, but because, for example, they are employees of a corporation who did great in it, but could not withstand the pressure of the result, or began to use designer drugs. Today we do not have a specialized offer for them – says prof. Bartosz Łoza
The program will start in July 2018, but time will tell if it will be a success. There is a shortage of psychiatrists in Poland, especially child psychiatrists. Moreover, Poles still treat a visit to a psychiatrist as a last resort and an admission that “I am crazy”.
In addition, the Ministry of Health has already carried out a project to save patients with mental disorders. The “National Mental Health Program” lasted five years, but unfortunately it did not protect the psyche of Poles. In a devastating, though not surprising report, NIK summarized it last year as follows: “It was not possible to improve the quality of life of people with mental disorders”, and “the lack of funds and poor organization of work caused the program to fail”. The term “failure” is actually a euphemism.
In an interview with Medonet, the strong words of prof. Bartosz Łoz, head of the Department of Psychiatry of the Medical University of Warsaw: “Polish psychiatry has nothing to offer the patient” and “it is ugly”.
At that time, the Ministry implemented only three out of … 32 tasks provided for in the program. And the main culprit of the Supreme Audit Office was the then minister of health, because “he did not guarantee funds for its implementation”.
350 million people worldwide suffer from depression, including 1,5 million Poles. Almost eight thousand children are treated for it. He gets sick much more, only no one will ever diagnose them. The police statistics are shocking: 2015 children committed suicide in 177, the youngest of them was under 9 years old.
The key task of the previous project was to provide people with mental disorders with support after the end of the acute phase of the disease treatment in the clinic, i.e. after returning home and work.
In Poland, as much as 70 percent. of patients are admitted to the hospital in a closed ward, although half of them could successfully be in the daytime and leave the hospital in the afternoon to stay at home overnight. Such a system works in Germany, Italy and England. To make it similar in Poland, it was planned to create a Mental Health Center, which would be used not only by people with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or depression, but each of us, if we had not been able to cope with e.g. divorce, burnout, addiction, insomnia, breakdown after death a loved one or after losing a job. Because these common problems are, next to severe mental illnesses, the most common cause of suicide. Unfortunately, the centers did not fulfill their role for the simple reason that … they did not arise. On the other hand, during the five years of the program, the number of suicides in Poland increased even more. And that’s by half.
Professor Łoza six years ago, when the first edition of the program was announced, immediately wrote to the ministry that this wonderful idea was a utopia, with no chance of success.
In Poland, we have 3,5 thousand. psychiatrists, although 7,8 thousand are needed. Only 380 of those for children, there should be 780 of them, which is more than twice as many.
The patients were so desperate that they decided to take matters into their own hands. Together with doctors, they organized the first Mental Health Congress. They met on May 8, 2017, and on that day presented their manifesto to the Minister of Health.
It seems that their fight was not in vain. There is still a shortage of psychiatrists, but many more psychologists ready to conduct therapy. Long-term therapy was so difficult to obtain in state clinics that several years were waiting for it, so those who could afford it went to therapists, but receiving patients in private offices. The cost of one hour of consultation is about PLN 150.
It will be possible to try to get treatment reimbursed by the National Health Fund from 1 July in 28 hospitals and clinics in Poland in Bolesławiec, Chełm, Cieszyn, Łódź, Bielsko-Biała, Kościerzyna, Nowa Dęba, Hajnówka, Kołobrzeg, Radzyń Podlaski, Łomża, Elbląg, Koszalin , Sandomierz, Gorlice, Gorzów Wielkopolski, Gniezno, Grajewo, Jarosław, Kraków, Międzyrzecz, Pruszków, Suwałki, Tarnów, Toruń, Warsaw.