Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

HEALTH

Danish government announces plan to spend half a billion on mental health

The Danish government wants to spend 567 million kroner on mental health services in 2024.

Published: 12 October 2023 16:56 CEST
Danish government announces plan to spend half a billion on mental health
Health Minister Sophie Løhde presented on Thursday a major proposal for Denmark's mental health services. Photo: Liselotte Sabroe/Ritzau Scanpix

The focus of the spending will be psychiatric services for children and young people; reducing waiting times, and more staff and resources for research, Health Minister Sophie Løhde said at a briefing on Thursday.

Løhde admitted at the briefing that the country’s mental health services are currently facing “great challenges”, saying that many young people are currently struggling with their mental wellbeing and that the impacts of this for them and their families are serious.

“Far too many are waiting far too long to be examined and treated,” the minister said.

“We must make sure we improve the quality of treatment for children and young people,” she said.

READ ALSO: Denmark’s new 10-year-plan to improve mental health care (2022)

A feature of the proposal is a so-called “here-and-now” package for mental health services for children and young people, designed to increase capacity.

That will mean patients could be offered treatment sooner, including while their investigations are still ongoing. There will also be more follow-up care for those who have completed treatment courses.

The government also wants to enforce “obligatory partnerships between Regions [regional health authorities, ed.] and municipalities” on setting targets for prevention and de-escalation of situations where a person’s behaviour becomes aggressive.

A further ambition for the government is to place psychiatry within the basic medical training programme for doctors, thereby boosting the number of doctors who specialise in psychiatry.

“There is no doubt that the biggest problem for the health service right now is a staff shortage, not least in the area of psychiatry, which finds it hard to attract doctors,” Løhde said.

The government wants to pour an extra 400 million kroner into mental health services via the 2024 budget, for spending on the areas specified in Thursday’s proposal. Some 67 million kroner are comprised within Regional and municipal budgets, while 100 million will be drawn from the national budget’s research reserve to fund research on the area.

Combined with additional investments in mental health services already secured through earlier budgets, next year’s spending on the area is bolstered by a total of 1.6 billion kroner.

A large majority in parliament voted in September 2022, under the previous, single-party Social Democratic government, for a ten-year plan for mental health services which earmarked annual spending of 500 million kroner.

Løhde said on Thursday that a new proposal for a fully-costed ten-year plan will be presented in 2024.

The latest proposal and the plans already in place do not solve all the obstacles face by Denmark’s mental health services, the minister said.

“As much as I’d like to promise we’ll fix all the problems, I can’t issue such a promise.

“It would not be realistic or honest to those affected by this, or to their families,” she said.

“Mental health services have a huge backlog,” she said.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

HEALTH

‘Some towns had zero births’: Greenlanders sue Denmark over forced contraception

Henriette Berthelsen was separated from her family at 11 and forced to wear a contraceptive coil, a trauma she buried until she and 142 other Greenlandic women sued the Danish state.

Published: 3 May 2024 11:07 CEST
'Some towns had zero births': Greenlanders sue Denmark over forced contraception

Henriette Berthelsen was separated from her family at 11 and forced to wear a contraceptive coil, a trauma she buried until she and 142 other Greenlandic women sued the Danish state.

“I’ve suppressed so much,” Berthelsen said. “I had an IUD (intrauterine device) fitted nine times since the age of 13, according to my medical records,” the psychologist and activist explained with poise and dignity.

“Luckily — if one can say luckily — they fell out,” she said, her voice cracking, at her home in a Copenhagen suburb. “I remember being in so much pain.” 

Now 66, Berthelsen is one of the 143 Greenland Inuits who have sued the Danish state for violating their rights during its forced contraception campaign from the 1960s to 1980.

Some 4,500 fertile women were forced to undergo the procedure, often without their or their family’s consent.

Denmark carried out the campaign to limit the birth rate in the Arctic territory, which had not been its colony since 1953 but was still under its control.

Berthelsen’s parents never consented to her coils.

At the recommendation of the state, she was sent to Denmark for a year as a young girl to learn Danish and then to a Danish boarding school in Nuuk, Greenland’s capital, far from her hometown of Qeqertarsuatsiaat in southwestern Greenland.

One day, “there was a sign that said that all the girls from the boarding school had to go to the infirmary”, she said.

The IUDs kept falling out, she recalled, holding a photograph of herself from the time — a young girl with long dark plaits.

‘Never contradict a Dane’

For a long time she didn’t tell anyone about her ordeal, remembering what her mother had taught her: ‘Never contradict a Dane’.

For many of her classmates, the experience had a devastating impact.

“In my class there were several girls who were never able to have children,” she said.

Berthelsen herself went on to have two kids.

She is now campaigning to get the Danish state to pay for therapy for the victims living in Denmark.

Greenland already pays such benefits to those living in the territory.

Ebbe Volquardsen, a lecturer at the University of Nuuk, said the women were seeking justice now because the time was ripe.

“It simply takes time for marginalised groups, including Greenlanders within the Danish realm, to develop an awareness of systemic inequality and the ability to articulate it as a problem,” she explained.

One of the victims spoke out in the media several years ago about the trauma she experienced.

A podcast series by Danish public broadcaster DR in 2022 then revealed the extent of the campaign.

“It’s important that the Danish state takes responsibility,” said Berthelsen.

“Some things happened as a result of colonialism” — like “deciding, instead of the people (concerned), whether they are too many or too few, committing a genocide, committing violence and offences against young girls”, she fumed.

Historian Soren Rud told AFP: “In the context of the 2020s, the authoritarian elements of the campaign stood out as a shocking example of how the colonial and post-colonial situation affected the interaction between Greenlanders and Danes.”

‘Big success’

The lawyer for the plaintiffs, Mads Pramming, said one of the documents presented as evidence in the case is a copy of a 1971 review by a doctor extolling the “success” of the policy.

“There were 9,000 fertile women and, in just four years, they inserted an IUD in half of them. So 4,500. And the population dived enormously,” he said.

“Some towns had zero births during that period. After four years they concluded (it was a) big success.”

The large majority of the plaintiffs — the oldest of whom is now 82 — were left with lasting scars.

“Of the 143, about 50 of them had their uterus removed and were not able to have kids, and all of them suffered” physically and mentally, he said.

“Their own testimony is going to be the hardest evidence in the case.”

A fire destroyed many of the women’s medical files but that’s unlikely to change much.

“I don’t think the doctor would put in the medical file that he inserted this IUD in a 12-year-old girl with her crying and being held by two other adults,” Pramming said.

In October 2023, 67 of the plaintiffs filed claims for compensation from the Danish state of 300,000 kroner ($42,000) each.

“All of the requests for compensation will be evaluated by (us),” the health ministry told AFP in an email.

The case comes as Denmark and Greenland are re-examining their past relationship in a historic parliamentary committee.

In addition, researchers have opened a probe specifically into the forced contraception campaign.

Its conclusions are due in mid-2025.

SHOW COMMENTS