Each of the eight new health groups interdepartmental units of the Valencian Community will have at least one unit this year to care for patients withhealth mental in his firsts psychotic episodes.
Of them, three correspond to the province of Alicante and will open in the health areas of Alicante-Sant Joan, Elche and Elda to serve the entire territory. This is what the head of the Autonomous Office of Mental Health and Addictions advances, Bartolomé Pérez Gálvezin its crusade to improve the mental health of people from Alicante, Valencia and Castellón.
“We are the first in mental disorders, but we are behind in resources”
Mental health plan
Pérez Gálvez directs a mental health and addictions plan that has a budget of almost 284 million euros, which raises 724 million the Consell’s investment in these policies, that seek to improve the psychiatric situation of autonomy, at the head of mental disorders in Spain, consumption of alcohol, cannabis and tranquilizers in minors between 12 and 16 years of age, in addition to being one of the ones with the fewest resources and the third worst in training. To address this problem, they have been designed 23 day hospitals for children and adolescents which the Consell anticipates will be open and operational in March 2025.
The Community will have 23 mental health day hospitals for children and adolescents
Returning to the new first episode psychotic units, these will care for patients with serious mental disorders such as schizophrenia or bipolarity. «They are diseases that deteriorate the brain. The more we delay this damage, the more cognitive reserve that person will have. It is not the same thing in quotes that they condemn you as schizophrenic after apsychotic outbreak at 18 years old until you manage to maintain it. When you intervene in the initial phases of the disease, you are achieving this,” explains the Alicante psychiatrist.
«They are diseases that deteriorate the brain. “The more we delay this damage, the more cognitive reserve that person will have.”
Bartolomé Pérez Gálvez. Head of the Regional Mental Health Office
Thus, it points to cases of people with this pathology who have completed their university degree, “which means that they have superior capabilities to a good part of the population. The important thing is to enter as soon as possible, as soon as symptoms appear, to a specific treatmentnot to give him a medicine and goodbye very good.
This is the objective of first episode psychotic units (delusions and hallucinations). This year’s budget allocates a portion of personnel to provide those eight designed for the entire Community, which will basically be made up of a psychiatrist, a psychologist and a nurse, “and that will be there as soon as possible, this year.”
Very careful service
The chosen departments are Alicante-Sant Joanwhich already had a unit for first psychotic episodes with many patients and which was eliminated two terms ago; Elda and Elche. These very specialized sections will offer outpatient treatment since they are not admission. According to Pérez Gálvez, it will be a very careful service from Valencia because they require very special training and provision of resources. “You have to specialize this staff a lot,” he says.
Admission beds
The mental health and addictions plan also includes the province of Alicante double the admission beds in child and adolescent psychiatry. Currently there are only eight, all in the Orihuela Hospital, and the forecast, according to Pérez Gálvez, is to raise them to a minimum of twenty.
Thus, six will be opened at the Alcoy Hospital, which is already working on its new child psychiatry unit; another six in the General of Elche to child and youth admission; and an amount yet to be determined at the Sant Joan Hospital.
The lack of this type of admission beds in the Community will be alleviated, according to the representative of the Ministry of Health, within a year by ensuring that the units will be open between 2024 and 2025. In addition to these three, two will be created more in the province of Valencia, in the Doctor Peset and the Gandía Hospital. According to Pérez Gálvez, the current total of 19 beds, adding those in Orihuela, Castellón and La Fe, will go from a minimum of 60.
The Sant Joan Hospital has a psychiatry ward that not only serves the population of any age in its department but also that of the health area of the General Hospital of Alicante, that is, practically the entire capital. The 30 beds available in the psychiatric admission unit of this center, which is the second largest acute care center in the regional hospitals, are always busy. It also has six others for eating disorders.
Health is working on the creation of a new plant well in the hospital Doctor Balmiswell in that of San Vicente, which cares for medical illnesses that require medium and long-term hospitalization, such as chronic patients. A project that, according to the head of the Autonomous Office of Mental Health, will become a reality this term.
“Sant Joan cannot take on more beds” (for psychiatric hospitalization)
Bartolomé Pérez Gálvez. Head of the Office of Mental Health and Addictions
«It is needed and we must have it. Alicante is the only department like Dénia that has two hospitals. Doctor Balmis has a plan for works and can get in line, but another option could be San Vicente,” he says. The decision will be made next year “because Sant Joan cannot take on more beds».
The increase in suicide attempts slows down in adolescents but there are more eating disorders
Reform
Until then, there will be changes in mental health facility of this last hospital, which is on the third floor and is going to go up to the fourth, with an adequate perimeter closure since it is intended that the areas of Psychiatry are on the upper or lower floor with exterior exit and with large spaces.
This work is approved and will be developed in the second half of 2025 with a concept of changing the psychiatry unit. Because “we have asked all health departments improvement works that have an impact on patients and workers»which can be furniture and minor works to improve the image, and work better, in addition to having a positive impact on the patient.
“We have asked all health departments for improvement works that impact patients and workers”
Bartolomé Pérez Gálvez. Head of the Regional Mental Health Office
The Sant Joan Hospital also centralizes Psychiatry emergencies both in its department and in Alicante-General Hospital, the area where half of the situations arise. Something that is not repeated in any other department of the Community and that “causes logical delays in assistance».
This coincides with the rise of mental health problems, which have increased greatly since the pandemic, especially among minors. Suicide attempts in children and adolescents between 11 and 18 years of age have multiplied almost fivefold in recent years and now eating disorders are increasing with cases of problems with food at only 10 years old.
To reinforce the work they do, Health has decided double psychiatric emergencies by increasing on-call hours, which are not to serve those admitted but to people on the street. Right now there is one on-call psychiatrist and one resident for 500,000 inhabitants. It has been approved incorporation of another professional who will be on local guard to be able to answer telephone queries and prescribe drugs in order to avoid overload and the service is now being organized.
The future is a matter for psychologists and psychiatrists
Be a structural reinforcement, that is, in a stable way, which has already been approved, to serve the population of both the departments of Alicante and Sant Joan. Thus, when they are saturated they will call the on-call psychiatrist, If necessary, you can also go to the hospital that serves the largest population in the emergency department and also avoid waiting times.
Another of the objectives of the Office of Mental Health and Addictions is to increase the material provision, from personality tests to virtual reality approaches. «It is shocking to think about it because they are the normal work instruments of a psychologist and they do not have it. In Mental Health they are very accustomed to work with few resources», says Pérez Gálvez. Regarding personnel, the need to increase staff to approach the population rate stands out.
The average of all departments is 7.20 psychiatrists per 100,000 inhabitants but Torrevieja only has 3.9, despite the fact that it has localized guards and ten hospital beds, managing with a small staff. Therefore, the idea is to increase staffing in the most needy departments “because they are abandoned.” In Elche the rate is 7.9 psychiatrists per 100,000 inhabitants; Alicante, without beds, has 7.2; Sant Joan, 8.4; Orihuela, 6.3; Elda 7.3; and Alcoy, 6.5. In Dénia they are 5.9, “and they are bad because out of 14 psychiatrists there are 7 vacant positions.” There are 20 Psychiatry vacancies throughout the Community. All hospitals, except Alicante, have a psychiatric ward “and everyone will win.”