The first mental health center (CDZ) started operating in the Liberec region, which helps people with psychoses and other mental disorders. It was opened in Liberec by the non-governmental organization Fokus, the Liberec region contributed three million crowns to its creation. The Liberec region was the last region in the country where such a center had not yet existed.
Through the new CDZ, Fokus Liberec will serve Liberec, Frýdlantsko and partially Jablonec. “I firmly believe that Mental Health Centers will expand to other regions of the Liberec region. I would like it if other districts – Česká Lípa, Jablonec nad Nisou and Semily – had their own CDZ,” Deputy Governor for Social Affairs Petr Tulpa (Mayors for the Liberecký Region) said on the region’s website.
“The very idea of creating such a facility, personnel and coordination support was given by the Department of Social Affairs through individual projects. The Department of Health contributed to the first six months of the service’s operation so that after this period it was fully able to draw funds from health insurance companies,” explained Vladimír Richter, member of the regional council for the Department of Health.
The money from the region will be used to ensure the operation of the Liberec center this year. “To get it going at all. From the beginning, we needed to equip the surgery and provide operational resources,” Tulpa explained, adding that in the coming years, the operation of the center should be covered by health insurance.
Multidisciplinary team support
The fact that the center in Liberec is only opening now, according to Tulpa, does not mean that experts have not yet provided help to people with mental illness living in the region. But it was more complicated. “It wasn’t completely transparent, it wasn’t visible, but the teams were working through other systems through social services,” Tulpa described. These services were also provided by Fokus from Liberec. “The mental health center is a continuation of our services, which we have been providing here for several years,” said Jana Horáková, director of Fokus Liberec. Based on the experience of recent years, he expects that at least 150 people will use the center’s services annually.
The center operates a so-called multidisciplinary team, which includes a psychiatrist, psychiatric and general nurses, a psychologist, social workers and peer consultants, i.e. people with personal experience of mental illness. “All team members work on an outpatient basis and in the field – in the natural environment of a person with a mental illness. The client can also use daily group or individual programs,” added Horáková.
The organization Fokus Liberec, which will provide the Mental Health Centers, provides services to adults with mental illnesses, especially psychoses, affective disorders (mood disorders), or with personality disorders or anxiety disorders, who have been treated for more than two years and need support in more areas. The service is also intended for people who are at risk of developing a mental illness and for whom treatment needs to be started quickly.
red, ČTK
