The European Commission Green Paper on Mental Health
Introduction
The Green Paper was launched by the Commission on 14th October 2005 at a High Level Conference.
The Green Paper was intended to build on work within past and current EU-Public Health Programmes; on mental health-related Council documents since 1999; and on the 2005 WHO European Ministerial Conference on Mental health and its results. An extensive consultation was held to discuss aspects of the Green Paper.
The following priorities are identified in the paper:
- To promote the mental health of all
- To tackle the major mental disorders and support vulnerable groups
- To improve the quality of life of people with mental ill health or disability through social inclusion and the protection of their rights and dignity
- To develop a mental health information system for the EU- to promote mental health in the whole population.
The key messages contained in the Green Paper include:
- Mental health is crucially important for key EU policy objectives (e.g. health, quality of life, economic and social welfare, transition into a knowledge society). However serious challenges can be identified.
- The mental health of the EU-population is not as good as it should be ( e.g. high suicide rates in some Member States, increased diagnosis of conduct disorders in children and young people, and a rise in working days lost to the economy due to mental ill health)
- There is now a considerable and growing body of evidence on interventions to promote mental health and to prevent mental ill health and it is important to ensure this evidence is better known and more widely utilised and integrated into policies and programmes.
- People with mental ill health or disability experience stigma and discrimination and their fundamental rights are not always respected. Stigma can impede recovery by affecting individual’s willingness to seek help and can contribute to social exclusion. The EU has a clear mandate to act in this field.
- There is a need to improve information collection to facilitate the effective monitoring of mental health service systems. In addition, more and better information is required on the determinants of mental health and further research needed into the effectiveness of interventions in an EU context.
The Green Paper proposed several initiatives that might be developed by the European Commission, for example:
- Council Recommendations on: mental health promotion; potentially with the aims of the reducing the burden of depression, or reducing the incidence of suicide.
- Identification and promulgation of best practice in promotion social inclusion and protecting the rights of people with mental ill health and disability
- Proposing that the work of the Fundamental Rights Agency of the EU should include people with mental ill health and disability and extend to psychiatric institutions