Community Mental Health Services in Greece: Development, Challenges and Future Directions

Abstract

The current system of mental health care in Greece was created in accordance with the European Union and other international principles for mental health care provisions. Whereas Greece has been reforming its system of mental health care since at least the 1980s, the main recent Greek effort has been Psychargos, a program which began in 2000 and is still in effect. During the last two decades the Greek mental health system has been gradually shifting to a community-based system of care. Various services with unique, yet intertwined, responsibilities have been introduced. The Greek system of mental health care still faces challenges, and the mental health reform is ongoing. Future goals should be to improve the current framework of care and access to care by establishing community mental health services across the country that are fit for purpose, enhancing multidisciplinary collaboration and patient involvement, integrating community mental health care with physical and social care services, and ensuring that service development is driven by need. Crucially, such aims demand the adoption of a culture of clinical governance and a consistent shift from traditional therapeutic care to person-centred psychiatry and preventive psychiatry.