Description
Major differences exist in the accessibility of services in the field of mental health in Slovenia. The general objective of the project is to improve these services. The project strives to reach this objective by educating professionals from the primary health level, social protection and the police. Furthermore, the project will provide primary health care professionals and other experts support for strengthening their own mental health and facing workplace stress. The project will also improve local capacities in the field of public health by expanding the practice of three psychological counselling centres: Posvet (Ljubljana, Kranj) and Tu smo zate (Celje) to four other Slovenian regions. Individual counselling in the existing centres in Ljubljana and Celje will also be upgraded with educational and experiential groups for those who are grieving, for divorced parents and for parents experiencing problems with their children. At the same time, a media awareness campaign targeting the general public with information on the importance of mental health, mental problems, their causes and signs as well as on suicidal behaviour will be carried out.
Summary of project results
The project address two major public health problems in Slovenia, namely depression and suicide. In half of cases, depression remains unrecognized and untreated which can lead to suicidal behaviour that also often goes unnoticed. Hence, consistent and continual cooperation with all gatekeepers of the system working with vulnerable individuals is required; major differences exist in the accessibility of mental health services in Slovenia. Even though psychotherapeutic treatment is available and covered by health insurance waiting lists are very long. Counselling Centres for Adults in Mental Distress are needed to enable timely treatment for people in need; professionals working with people facing mental health problems often are stressed themselves or develope mental health problems. Thus various forms of support need to be available for professionals as well. The project brought new innovative solutions which go beyond existing practices of mental health and suicide prevention in Slovenia and upgrade them. The general objective of the project was to improve mental health services. The specific objectives were to increase the number of primary health professionals and others who are trained to recognise mental distress and suicidal behaviour and upgrade counselling centres for adults in mental distress in regions where they prior existed and develop them in new regions. Following that, the target groups were primary health professionals and others working with vulnerable groups and adults in mental distress. All the given objectives were met and overachieved. The outcome of the project were greater capacity in the field of mental health professionals in primary health care and other professionals and improved local capacites in the field of mental health. The project outputs were: the inclusion of 600 professionals into the programme for recognising mental distress and suicidal behaviour; 6 newly established; 3 upgraded counselling centres; 100 professionals were included in a program for strengthening their own mental health, general public was addressed by the means of a public awareness campaign. The beneficiaries were people in mental health distress, mental health gatekeepers and the general public. The collaboration also provided added value in the sense of establishing a permanent expert interdisciplinary group, which will help the state implement the tasks of the National Mental Health Programme.
Summary of bilateral results