Vigo has more patients than ever waiting for their first consultation with the psychiatrist; the problem is greater than in the rest of Galicia
Jun 09, 2024 . Updated at 05:00 a.m.The public health system is overwhelmed by the strong epidemic of mental health ailments that psychiatrists and psychologists perceive since the covid-21 pandemic. The waiting lists show that the magnitude of this problem is historic. According to the latest official data – published by the Servizo Galego de Sade last week and updated as of December 31 – in Vigo there are 3,171 people waiting for a first mental health assessment. It is the highest figure since there is data. Follow-up appointments or check-ups, which typically have long waits, are not counted.
But these figures reveal a specific problem in the Vigo health area. It is true that throughout Galicia—in fact, throughout Europe—the demand for mental health services has grown in recent years. But nowhere in this autonomous community has the great growth in demand overwhelmed public health resources as strongly as in Vigo. Ten readings of the official Sergas data specify the specific problem of Vigo.
First. The Vigo health area is home to 20% of the Galician population, but it is home to 30% of the patients on the psychiatrist waiting list.
Second. The other two areas of the community that have a similar population size, A Corua (also includes the Costa da Morte) and Santiago (includes O Barbanza) have less than half as many patients as Vigo waiting to be seen by a psychiatrist: 1,419 and 1,406, respectively.
Third. The time a consultation takes is longer than any other Galician healthcare area. Waiting lists do not indicate how long a consultation takes. It is different. Sergas makes a cut on December 31 and sees how long the patients have been on the waiting list. He makes an average of all of them and calls this average waiting time; consultations are delayed much longer. That average waiting time in Vigo was 113 days. In other words, on December 31, people referred to the psychiatrist had been waiting for almost four months to receive them. The next area of the autonomous community is Lugo, with 74 days. In A Corua there were 34 and in Santiago, 41.
Room. In just one year, times have more than doubled. On December 31, 2022, the average wait time was 49 days; now there are 113. This does not happen in any area of Galicia. Of the seven, two improve very clearly (A Corua and Pontevedra) and another remains practically the same (Santiago), but there is none where the waiting time increases so much.
Fifth. Of the more than 3,000 people waiting for a first appointment with a psychiatrist, 741 have been waiting for more than six months. They are one in four.
Sixth. In the rest of Galicia there are hardly any patients who have been waiting for a first consultation for more than six months. There are only 90 in Lugo and five in Ourense, according to official data. This means that 90% of the long waits are in Vigo.
Seventh. It is new to have to wait more than half a year just for the first examination with the psychiatrist. You have to go back to 2013 to find that there were patients waiting more than six months. Between the years 2007 and 2013 there were people who waited more than half a year for a mental health consultation, but they were always a handful, an average of six a year. Now there are 741.
Eighth. The context. The great paradox of all this is that in the last year the waiting lists have decreased in Vigo. Sergas offers waiting list data for consultations for 31 services. 19 of them now have fewer patients than a year before. Of those that get worse (12 have more patients, 15 have longer waits), none of them grow as much as a psychiatrist in number of patients or in waiting time.
Nineth. If a person has been waiting for a consultation in Vigo for more than three months, it is almost certainly a psychiatrist. 1,739 people have been waiting for their first mental health appointment for more than 90 days. Of the other 30 services, according to official Sergas data, there are only five.
Tenth. In 2005, of all the patients waiting for a consultation with a specialist in a hospital in Vigo, only 1% waited to be received by the psychiatrist. Right now they are 10%.
Keys: The wave of diseases and primary care
The sources consulted among the psychiatrists in the Vigo health area say that they are overwhelmed by the demand. On the one hand, there are mental health problems that were previously addressed in primary care, but as health centers are also overwhelmed, there are more and more referrals to the hospital. On the other hand, in recent months there have been more than a dozen casualties in the psychiatrist service and there are no doctors who specialize in unemployment in the market, but many prefer to go to private healthcare. This happens when the ratios of psychiatrists and psychologists per inhabitants are at the bottom of Europe. And finally, all of this coincides with a huge mental health crisis that has increased the demand for consultations more than ever.