ABSTRACT
Diversity of mental health care in Europe reflects economic capacity and the extent each country is prepared to invest in mental health (Marusic, 2004). As a result, there are many disparities in the mental health of the populations in the different European countries as assessed by a variety of indicators of mental health (Agius et al., 2005). Among others, there are variations of general menta0l health in terms of perceived wellbeing or psychological distress, amount and type of interventions, rates of death from suicide or due to substance use, mental illness-related diseases such as liver cirrhosis due to alcohol misuse, the proportion of people in the general population who recognize the symptoms of a given mental disorder, the percentage of psychiatrists who know and apply best practice guidelines for the identification and management of mental illness, and, finally, the proportion of medication needs met among people with mental illness. Thus,
writing about mental health services in Europe may end up as a country-by-country description. As McKee and Jacobson (2000) pointed out, ‘any attempt to describe public health in Europe faces the twin problems of defining Europe and of dealing with the diversity of health and health systems it contains’.
