SVT Nyheter has sent out a survey to which managers at 334 health centers answered. Several of the respondents criticize psychiatric care. Nine out of ten care centers say that they need to take care of patients who should actually be cared for in psychiatry.
Care managers in psychiatry that SVT Nyheter has been in contact with instead believe that it is primary care that is unable to fulfill its mission.
The Christian Democrat Jakob Forssmed is the newly appointed Minister of Social Affairs and is ultimately responsible for this issue. He reacts when SVT Nyheter shows him what the health care team answered.
– Here, they have not succeeded in working together for the benefit of the patients. There is a concern when individual patients feel that they have to fight for care in order to receive care at the right level, he says.
Want more national governance
He says that the newly appointed government wants to manage healthcare more from a national level than is done today.
– We also need to work on expanding primary care further to get better opportunities to make assessments about mental health, he says and continues:
– Now we are working on developing a new strategy for mental health and suicide prevention and then, of course, this type of governance and organizational issues must also be included in that work.