SCOPE AND PURPOSE
Mental health services undergo continuous development and shaping. In modern mental health care, the focus is put on recovery.
Recovery means that a person can use his or her own skills (again), and that symptoms of a mental disorder or challenge are not hindering. To use one’s skills, it is necessary to be in the community. It is important to be connected to one’s own surrounding, own family and friends, own social environment. Isolation and exclusion will not help them recover.
Many countries all over the world have built, or are building a community-based system to address the needs of the clients. People with mental health problems asking for help are always in need of several things. They are not only patients, but they are also human beings with wishes and possibilities, which means that they are clients and should be in the centre of the decision-making process about what they need at all levels.
- The starting point of mental health care should be close to where people live and where people want to be successful. Organizing community-based mental health care teams and working with them could be a state-of-the-art answer to the needs of people with (severe) mental health problems.
- Across Europe, some countries have been working for decades on bringing mental health care into communities, which led to significant improvements in the lives and health of people with mental health problems. Other countries have produced mental health strategies and started to implement community-based care, with successes and challenges.
- The EU situation is interesting because of many differences, but also similarities. At the EU level, policy-making can help in giving direction. Sharing information among countries is also important.
The conference will offer an opportunity to share knowledge and learn about community-based mental health care: what are the principles, how you can organize it, what are the experiences of different countries?
It will give the opportunity to exchange information, to connect with other countries and to get ideas to innovate and be progressive.
PROGRAMME THEMES
Stigma, awareness, organisation, integrated care, recovery, community teams, user participation, peer workers, country experiences, after care, position of different disciplines and services, care pathway, policy, mental health care vision, how to involve communities.
The program is built like a circle: it starts with a creative, client-centered introduction, from learning about the situation all over the world, to different parts of community-based mental health care, choosing between workshops on specific topics, learning about stigma and how it all comes together in what can be a vision. From that vision, you can build a system and a pathway with all the parts. The circle is round, it has no end. Only then you can start evaluating your system. It never stops.
WHO IS INVITED?
People involved in the mental health care are invited to attend the conference, including clients or users, health professionals and policy makers.
ORGANISATION
The international conference in community-based mental health is organised by the Croatian Institute of Public Health, together with the Trimbos Institute, the Netherlands Institute of Mental Health and Addiction, Croatian Medical Association – Croatian Society for Clinical Psychiatry and Croatian Psychiatric Association, in partnership with the European Community based Mental health Service providers Network (EuCoMS).
The conference is held under the high auspices of the Croatian Parliament and under the auspices of the City of Zagreb and the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Croatia.
