Abstract
Georgia has recently made a commendable effort to reform mental health care. The "Concept on Mental Health Care" adopted by the Government and the two strategic plans for 2014-2020 and 2021-2031, which aimed to develop comprehensive evidence-based, culturally appropriate, and human rights-oriented mental health care, have promoted the deinstitutionalization and development of community mental health services. Since 2018, new standards of care for mental health ambulatories and mobile teams have been imposed and implemented in the state programme and funded accordingly. The study aimed to investigate the quality of care in community mental health services. As a result, we monitored the mental health ambulatories in all major cities and regional centres of the country (in total, 16 ambulatories) and the mobile teams which had at least two years of experience (in total, 14 mobile teams). The data analyses showed that the new standards for ambulatories and mobile teams increased access to and coverage of mental health care across the country. However, further effort is still needed to achieve comprehensive treatment by mental health care services.
Highlights
Following the growing global focus on deinstitutionalization in the past 50 years, accessible community mental health services were highlighted as a commitment in the European Mental Health Action Plan 2013–2020, with the goal of improving the well-being of patients and families.[1]
The increased budget and introduction of new standards for ambulatories and the development of mobile teams organized in all country regions have significantly increased the capacity for mental health care
E.g., psychiatric nurses, psychologists and social workers, have been trained and employed. In parallel to these remarkable achievements, the following challenges and barriers have been identified: The official number of patients registered with the community services exceeds the real number of service users. This statistical discrepancy distorts the actual need for mental health care services
Summary
Following the growing global focus on deinstitutionalization in the past 50 years, accessible community mental health services were highlighted as a commitment in the European Mental Health Action Plan 2013–2020, with the goal of improving the well-being of patients and families.[1]. The number and location of community services and the funding methodology have been changed and defined according to the populations of the catchment areas These changes contributed to achieving the indicator set by the mental health strategic document and the corresponding action plan for 2015–2020. The team serves people with acute mental health problems These services can be provided at home (with two daily visits possible), or a person can be transferred to the crisis intervention centre. THE AIM AND METHODS OF THE STUDY The study aimed to investigate the quality of the care provided by the community services, such as mental health ambulatories and mobile teams, and to develop recommendations for the further improvement of the standards of care based on the results.
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