Eduardo González
The acting Minister of Health, José Miñones, yesterday called for a greater budgetary commitment from each of the Member States of the European Union “to face the challenges that lie ahead” in the field of mental health.
Miñones made this request during his intervention, via telematics, at the High Level Conference A comprehensive EU approach that prioritizes good mental health for all, organized in Brussels by the Commissioner for Health, Stella Kyriakides, on the occasion of World Mental Health Day.
Together with this economic commitment, Miñones also defended the need to have guidelines for action that ensure a homogeneous framework for action in this field throughout the European Union and, in this sense, he reaffirmed the commitment of the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the EU to improve Mental Health in Europe by establishing synergies that contribute not only to making it a priority for all the Member States, but also to making vectors such as prevention, detection and treatment common throughout Europe.
The Minister also recalled that, on June 9, the document A new global approach to mental health of the European Commission was presented in Madrid, in the presence of Stella Kyriakides. That text, according Miñones, “generates the common roadmap that is so necessary for any country that is considering a revision of its mental health strategy to be able to do so”. The new approach has 1.23 billion euros in EU funding and 20 flagship initiatives and places mental health on a par with physical health.
According to the Spanish Presidency, the pandemic and the war in Ukraine have had an impact on the mental health of Europeans, with one in six Europeans suffering from mental health problems, a situation that is particularly worrying among the youngest. Many countries have implemented some measures to protect and care for the mental health of young people. For example, as Miñones recalled during his speech, Spain has a Mental Health Action Plan 2022-2024 which, with 100 million euros, is the first specific program in this field with a budget.
