European Union : Mental healthcare ecosystems

Mental health care is a health policy priority in Europe and the reform and scaling-up of services a key target. For that, a more balanced hospital-ambulatory approach is needed as it has been recognized that community-based care has a positive impact in quality of life of patients. The generation and use of scientific knowledge for mental health policy and planning is essential on the path to a balanced system. Health care ecosystem research follows a bottom-up approach that intends to include the local evidence of mental health care systems to overcome the usual limited top-down perspective. For that purpose, system tools like mental health atlas are now providing standardized empirical data about service provision in an area, based on taxonomies like the ESMS/DESDE system. Atlases in turn, support advanced modelling tools like the Efficient Decision Support -Mental Health (EDeS-MH) to improve knowledge on the health ecosystem, resource allocation and management in regional planning.