In November 2022, the Croatian Government adopted the Strategic Framework for Mental Health until 2030. The document recognizes mental health as a public health priority and stresses the need to undertake comprehensive and specific measures of health promotion, prevention and protection of mental health and treatment of mental disorders. It describes an increased prevalence of mental disorders and highlights factors that contribute to the burden of poor mental health in Croatia, such as the war in the 1990s, post-communist transition, social insecurity, population ageing, the COVID-19 pandemic, and recent earthquakes.
The purpose of the Strategic Framework is to define, in line with other strategic documents, the long-term goals for the improvement of mental health protection in order to decrease the occurrence of mental health disorders and related disability and to increase the accessibility of mental health services. Main areas for developing quality mental health care include raising awareness about mental health problems, timely detection and diagnosis, and appropriate treatment and rehabilitation.
The Strategic Framework defines five areas of action:
- Preservation and improvement of mental health
- Prevention and early diagnosis of mental health problems
- Increasing the availability of effective interventions (psychological, biological, social) while respecting human rights
- Community mental health protection (implementation of mobile teams)
- Ensuring effectiveness (active cooperation of all participants in the implementation process, especially health and social care systems at the national and local level, and cooperation with civil society and non-governmental organizations)
For the implementation and monitoring of the Strategic Framework, four action plans are anticipated:
- An action plan for mental health improvement, prevention, early detection, and treatment of mental disorders
- An action plan for the protection of the mental health of children and young people
- An action plan for implementation of community mental health
- An action plan for people with dementia
These action plans will also be the tools for monitoring the implementation of defined measures.
The Strategic Framework does not anticipate the need for additional financial resources for the implementation of measures, and implementation is instead to be covered by the regular funds from the Ministry of Health (the state budget) and from the Croatian Health Insurance Fund.
During the public consultations of the document, the Strategic Framework was criticized for its lack of specific measures, an insufficient focus on specific vulnerable groups, as well as its lack of defined financial resources for implementation. Furthermore, four action plans are anticipated to follow the Strategic Framework to guide implementation, but eight months after its publication, the action plans have not yet been presented.