Action plan peps up Europe's mental health

In an attempt to tackle Europe's rocketing rates of depression, anxiety and suicide, the World Health Organization (WHO) launched an action plan in January to bolster mental health treatment and research.

The plan was adopted by 52 countries attending a WHO European Ministerial Conference on Mental Health in Helsinki, Finland. It is the first region-wide effort to tackle mental illness and is expected to pave the way for similar schemes in other parts of the world.

The 12-point strategy spells out ways for member countries to better recognize, prevent and treat oft-ignored mental health problems. “It's the first time there's been a broad view on mental health,” says Paul Schnabel, head of the Social and Cultural Planning Office of the Netherlands, a policy research organisation based in The Hague.

Europe has some of the highest incidence of mental illness in the world, and experts have struggled to explain why. Lithuania, for example, has the top rate of suicide, and Denmark, Finland and Hungary rank close behind.

The new plan urges countries to make mental illness an integral part of existing public health policies and to increase access to information and care. It also calls for more rigorous, long-term studies to establish the safety and effectiveness of some mental health policies and treatments, such as moving patients from institutions to community-based care. This type of research has been limited because it is difficult to measure small improvements in mental illnesses.

Neuroscientist Colin Blakemore, head of the UK's Medical Research Council (MRC) in London, welcomes the research proposals in the action plan. He says that they mirror those in a review of the MRC's own research efforts into mental health, which is due to be released in April. The WHO document, for example, encourages research collaborations that span academic disciplines, such as psychology and anthropology, and that cross European borders.

But some medical researchers criticized the plan for ignoring basic research they say is needed to understand the causes of schizophrenia, depression and other conditions. Brain researcher Steven Rose at the Open University in Milton Keynes, UK, says that large epidemiological studies are needed to find out, for example, why depression and anxiety are on the rise.

In order to improve treatment, researchers say that European nations need to expand studies into immunology, genetics and brain imaging, which are beginning to pinpoint the molecules and brain regions underlying such disorders. These approaches, “offer the possibility of completely new approaches to treatment,” Blakemore says.

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Related external links

WHO European Ministerial Conference on Mental Health

WHO Mental Health Action Plan for Europe