ELF contributes to the creation of a mental health strategy

In February 2023, ELF provided feedback to the EU consultation on mental health.

Last month, ELF answered the European Commission’s Call for Evidence to promote good mental health. With the valuable help of scientific sources and the testimonials of the Patient Advisory Groups, ELF provided insight on the mental health of people with respiratory diseases and proposed 8 objectives that could help respond to mental health challenges.

The aim of the European Commission (EC) is to promote good mental health and to prevent, mitigate, and respond to mental health challenges. To achieve this, the EC intends to factor mental health considerations into a wide variety of resilient EU and national policies.

We presented our position on the mental health and psychological needs of people living with respiratory diseases with the aim of providing insight into how mental health and lung conditions are connected. We proposed the following objectives:

• To make mental health services more available by providing e-services, a network of multilingual specialists, free services for specific groups of people and incentives to specialists to move to smaller/rural areas.
• To provide support to people with mental health issues at the workplace, at school and at university so that they can integrate more efficiently and have the opportunity to develop their capabilities to the fullest.
• To empower the voices of people who face mental health issues by organising informational campaigns that reduce stigma by promoting the creation of patient groups and patient conferences.
• To improve healthcare facilities.
• To promote interinstitutional and interdisciplinary cooperation by creating coordinating bodies that will facilitate cooperation among different specialists and institutions.
• To promote lifelong learning that will provide more insight to the link between respiratory and mental health.
• To provide mental support to care givers, as well as educational programmes on mental and physical needs.
• To integrate mental health into all EU policies.

Read the full ELF answer to this consultation: https://europeanlung.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Mental-health-consultation_Final.pdf