Mental health systems in Europe: an analysis from the JA ImpleMENTAL SANA and Country Profile data

Introduction. The adoption of community-based mental health care was endorsed by the EU as a key component to improve quality of care. However, to what extent the move away from an institutional model is progressing in the European countries remains unclear.



Methods. The EU-funded Joint Action (JA) ImpleMENTAL (2021-2024) supports participating countries in transforming their mental health care systems through implementation of selected elements of best practices consistent with the mental health services reform. Within this project, a Situation Analysis and Needs Assessment (SANA) has been conducted for the 14 countries to fine-tune preliminary considerations for pilot implementations. The SANA was conducted in two parts, the first one analysing the situation at national level and making gaps in mental health community care visible on a country level, the second one targeting the level of the pilot implementations. The SANA questionnaire was based on questions from the WHO MH Atlas 2020 questionnaire, complemented by general population indicators from Eurostat, IHME, and EHIS, and original questions to which the countries answered using national databases or expert interviews. The questionnaire contained closed and open questions and the opportunity to provide comments on each of the closed questions.



Results. The collected data give an overview of the main features of the mental health system, available services and community-based care in the respective countries and pilot areas. The main results of the SANA were compiled into country-specific profiles followed by a SWOT analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats by each country.



Conclusion. The results highlight that the transition towards community-based mental health care is progressing at an uneven pace, showing commonalities and differences across the countries and presenting data gaps that should be appealed to in the future. The need for a joint effort in data collection and quality improvement will also be addressed.