It’s about scarce funding and the fact that professionals’ time is being wasted on nonsense.
“Good psychiatric treatment requires encountering a person on a profound level. The person being treated and their needs must be at the center of the treatment process,” says the professor of youth psychiatry Anu Raevuori.
We asked him why specialized psychiatric care for young people is in trouble year after year.
HS told in October About a 14-year-old girl, who has been taken to the hospital in a police convoy several times, but the treatment chain is still interrupted in his case. Similar problems have existed for a long time.
Firstly according to the professor, it’s about resources.
The amount of money spent on psychiatry has remained the same in Finland in twenty years, even though the demand for psychiatric care for young people has multiplied.
Second, little money is spent on stupid things. A significant portion of the time of psychiatrists, psychologists and nurses goes to writing statements.
“No one wants to be a speech machine. Professionals apply from the public sector to the private sector because they want to do quality work and focus on the patient.”
In twenty per year, the funding received by specialized medical care in Finland has grown enormously.
This means special somatic medical care, which at the beginning of the 2000s cost less than four billion a year, and in 2020 already more than seven billion.
Raevuori considers the growth to be completely justified, even this amount will not make it. As the population ages, the entire healthcare system is suffering.
During the same period, the funding of psychiatry in Finland has been kept more or less unchanged. We are talking about a total of about a billion a year if patients of all ages are taken into account.
In youth psychiatry in twenty years, visits to polyclinics have more than quadrupled and ward periods have also doubled.
Raevuori thinks that partly the number of people seeking help from youth psychiatry is a good change. At least in mild problems, we dare to ask for support.
All in all, this does not explain the need for help.
“At the same time, mental health symptoms have also increased among young people. Something in the living environment of young people increases it.”
This affects the whole society.
If you want to mention a single factor, the role of social media in young people’s lives has grown at the same pace as the nausea of young people.
But in the case of specialized medical care, it can therefore be stated that it does not work because there are too few professionals in relation to the young people who need help.
Treatment periods are shortened in the face of necessity. Efficiency is required, even if it fits psychiatry even worse than medicine in general.
Prevention and improving basic services are also important, but these do not eliminate the most serious mental illnesses and the need to receive treatment for them. If compared to other diseases, lifestyle changes are not recommended for cancer patients to replace surgery and cytostatic treatments.
In addition, the professor considers that recording takes up an unreasonable part of professionals’ working time. Getting treatment and rehabilitation is based on statements, which increases the professional’s workload and makes the patient’s progress in the service system an obstacle course.
“Good psychiatric care is impressive. In addition to treating psychological symptoms and their underlying causes, it is based on seeing a person as a whole, his whole life story. The current inefficient use of scarce resources does not serve this purpose,” says Raevuori.
Read more: 14-year-old Iida was taken in a police convoy to the psychiatric ward – Then began the series of events that tell about Hus’s deep problems
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Read more: Four years after the threat, mental health treatment for young people still works poorly
Read more: Treatment queues grow recklessly, but the law orders psychiatrists to do something completely different
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