Help us save the National Programme for the Protection of Mental Health (open letter).

The Polish Parliament is hurriedly considering a proposal for disposing of the present legal status, role and significance of the National Programme for the Protection of Mental Health (NPOZP). The Programme, which until now has been part of the Mental Health Act since 2011, has been implemented with great difficulty and much resistance, in close cooperation with local governments as well as broad circles of professionals, patients and their families, to whom the idea of humanist and personoriented reform of psychiatric care in our country is of great value. The matter of psychiatric care in Poland should be a priority of healthcare policy because of the social aspect of mental health, which requires comprehensive solutions and a much broader approach than in the case of somatic illness. Every fourth Polish family experiences problems related to mental health; every fourth Pole suffers from mental health issues and every tenth from serious mental illness. Approximately 20% of senior citizens, who are becoming a growing section of the society, suffer from various mental health complaints. The NPOZP programme has given us all hope for comprehensive care, suited to people’s needs, available close to their place of residence, preferably in a home environment. It has also given us hope for improving the dramatic situation of psychiatric healthcare and avoiding its possible final collapse. The proposal to deprive the National Programme of Mental Health care of its legal status, by degrading it to the level of one of the many operational objectives of the National Healthcare Programme, designed under the Public Health Act, would definitely undermine its rank, role and relevance. It would be a manifestation of overt disrespect and injustice to all those who expect a vigorous reform of the current psychiatric care