Greek psychiatric care reform: new perspectives and challenges for community mental health nursing

Abstract

The purpose of this article is twofold: (1) to explore the main issues of psychiatric care reform in Greece and outline the operating way of the new residential structures of psychiatric care and rehabilitation; and (2) to focus on the implementation of mental health nursing roles in the primary care services such as supervisor-therapist, liaison, coordinator-crisis interventionist and counsellor-trainer within the context of a multidisciplinary therapeutic team. Given that multiple professionals are involved in mental health care in primary care, issues of role are likely to be crucial to the effective implementation of new workers. Moreover, there is existing evidence of ambiguity in the roles of different mental health professionals in primary care, relating to the problems they manage and the treatments they provide. The authors believe that more emphasis needs to be given to the mental health nursing specialty in Greece, because the large majority of patients requiring mental health care should have the possibility of taking better quality of care as the psychiatric structures at community are continuously developing.

Do primary care professionals agree about progress with implementation of primary care teams: results from a cross sectional study

“…Consistent with other research [4, 24, 33, 40, 65] protected time for meetings and capacity to manage workload associated with meetings was rated as very important by nurses, clinical therapists and GPs.…”

“…Because the existing evidence tends to focus on the perspectives of specific professional groups [35–40], this is an area where surprisingly little is known [41]. This is problematic given the fact that the opinions of a variety of professionals, should be taken into account during implementation processes [41].…”

Integrated primary health care in Greece, a missing issue in the current health policy agenda: a systematic review

“…Development of new roles for all disciplines, and revision of existing job descriptions, is a critical task that should be undertaken at a legislative, policy and administrative level uniformly for all health regions of Greece [15, 25, 45, 48, 50, 53, 57, 61]. Debating which roles should be assigned to PHC teams or individuals in a multidisciplinary primary care setting, and how various initiatives can be integrated within different levels of care, present promising areas for future research [62–65], in line with international experience [66]. …”

Psychiatric Rehabilitation in Italy: Cinderella No More—The Contribution of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Technicians

“…The degree aims to train "rehabilitation expert professionals" who perform a major role in the organization and management of rehabilitation institutions. However, the number of rehabilitation expert professionals is limited (30)(31)(32)(33)(34)(35)(36)(37)(38)(39)(40) students per year at each university offering the course), based on the planning of the Ministry of University and Scientific and Technological Research.…”

“…The role of the large mental hospital had gradually diminished, and a large number of long-stay patients had been deinstitutionalized. Despite inadequacies and constraints, these changes have led to the adoption of new therapeutic-approach models for the care of the mentally ill and have stimulated the expansion of existing roles and the development of new roles within the mental health therapeutic team [35].…”