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WELCOME ADDRESS
WELCOME
ADDRESS
About 41 years after the Psychiatry En-
quete of the German Bundestag, much
has improved in the care of mentally ill
people. The keeping of affected persons in
often degrading conditions has given way
to needs-based, high-quality care. A more
open societal climate has also resulted in
a lowering among the population of the
psychological barrier to taking advantage
of support options. People more frequently
make use of psychiatric and psychothera-
peutic services.
This is in every respect a good develop-
ment, but it also brings new challenges for
the care system. Ultimately we are called
upon to secure the existing quality of
health care despite an increasing number
of mentally ill people and to further im-
prove care where necessary.
In this electoral period, the Federal Govern-
ment has therefore introduced measures
to strengthen outpatient and inpatient psy-
chiatric and psychotherapeutic care. For
example, the law to improve care provided
through statutory health insurances (“GKV-
Versorgungsstärkungsgesetz”), which came
into force in the summer of 2015, estab-
lished increasing the flexibility of psycho-
therapy policy as a task of the Federal Joint
Committee (G-BA). The G-BA will revise
parts of the newly formulated policy by the
end of November. The policy should also im-
prove timely access to an initial diagnostic
investigation and consultation. It is thereby
particularly important to us that the newly
introduced service of a psychotherapeutic
consultation is implemented quickly.
At the same time, the Institute for Quali-
ty and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG)
is working on the systematic search for
and evaluation of guidelines that in future
should be based on the structured treat-
ment programmes formulated by the G-BA
for people with depression. The final report
is to be submitted to the G-BA by the end of
the year and subsequently published.
We are also pursuing a modern psychiatric
and psychotherapeutic care system by fur-
© BMG/Jochen Zick