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| European Commission Green paper and consultation | |
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Promoting the Mental Health of the Population. Towards a
Strategy on Mental health for the European Union
The European Commission's Green paper "Promoting the Mental Health of the
Population. Towards a Strategy on Mental health for the European
Union" of September 2005 launched an extensive consultation. The document outlined the relevance of mental health for
some of the EU's strategic policy objectives (prosperity,
solidarity and social justice, quality of life of citizens),
proposes the development of a strategy on mental health at
Community-level and brought forward possible priorities and
suggestions for actions.
The European Commission invited European institutions,
Governments, health professionals, stakeholders in other sectors,
civil society including patient organisations, and the research
community to communicate their views on this document and the
questions proposed for the consultation:
1. How relevant is the mental health of the population for
the EU's strategic policy objectives, as detailed in section 1?
2. Would the development of a comprehensive EU-strategy on
mental health add value to the existing and envisaged actions and does section 5 propose
adequate priorities?
3. Are the initiatives proposed in sections 6 and 7 appropriate
to support the coordination between Member States, to promote the integration of mental
health into the health and non-health policies and stakeholder action, and to better
liaise research and policy on mental health aspects?
The deadline for contributions was 31 May 2006.
Responses to the Green Paper :
The Commission received the following responses to the consultation:
a)
Open consultation
Please find here the
responses
received to the Open Consultation. A summary report about the responses received through open consultation can be found here.
Contributions include reactions from European institutions:
- Resolution of the European Parliament of 6 September 2006
- Opinion by the European Economic and Social Committee of 17 March 2006.
b)
Structured consultation
Further to the open consultation period, a structured process
was organised involving key actors.
A high- level conference to launch the Green paper took place in Luxembourg on the 24 October 2005.
The launch conference was followed by
three thematic meetings until end of May 2006:
1) Meeting 1:
Promotion
and prevention in mental health (16-17 January 2006);
2) Meeting 2:
Social
inclusion and fundamental rights in mental health
(16-17 March 2006);
3) Meeting 3:
Information,
data and knowledge in mental health (18-19 May 2006).
The
consultative platform on mental health created for these
meetings prepared a
Report
and Recommendations
, as a response to the Green Paper.
A report summarising the meetings can be found
here.
Next steps
The Commission services are now drafting a Communication setting out a strategy on mental health. Its adoption
is scheduled to take place during spring of 2007.
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