Nurses in mental health – Case of Albania

Abstract

Human resources in mental health in Albania, a three million population LMIC, are essentially scarce as presented in a number of WHO publications over the last decade. The ‘Reform' of the system of care in mental health is much spoken about during the last 20 years using ‘community mental health care' as a basic keyword in national official documents describing short and long-term plans. The objective of the presentation is to describe the shortcomings in a developmental agenda when priority in building capacities is missing, pointing to nurses in mental health as a particularly important component. Data from different WHO and other UN publications are organized to offer a contextualized picture of the situation compare to other countries in the region too. Results are presented to fuel a discussion on how to prioritize the possible education activities/strategies in the way that the huge gap is starting being filled in a meaningful way for the benefit of the existing network of mental health institutions/services and future developments considering financial constrains and massive migratory trends on educated nurses. Establishing and strengthening the system of continuing education for nurses is presented as possibly the best solution besides other paths need being taken.