Half of those who need mental health care end up in the private sector

BarcelonaLast year, 18.2% of the Spanish population needed a consultation to treat a mental health problem or psychological or emotional distress, and although the majority initially sought care in the public health system, half ended up finding it in the private sector. These are the conclusions of the health barometer published this Thursday by the CIS, which confirms that although the majority of citizens (59%) turned to the public system, in the end less than half (47%) were treated in these centres. Private professionals assisted a third of those who needed this care and in most cases the patients treated did not have insurance that covered this care.

Of the patients who were treated in the public system, the majority (64.6%) had to wait between 1 and 3 months for a consultation, while in 23.8% of cases the wait was longer than 3 months. As for the professionals who attended to these demands, one third of the patients were attended by a primary care professional, another third by a psychiatric specialist and the rest by a psychologist.

A 6 for the public system

The survey also asked about the preferences of citizens who need to be admitted to a hospital. In this sense, the vast majority (76%) prefer a public centre and seven out of ten also choose to go to the emergency room in a public hospital rather than in a private one. In fact, this proportion has grown six points compared to the data collected in the barometer before the pandemic.

Despite this preference for the public, the grade that citizens give to the public health system remains stable at 6.28 out of 10, a figure still slightly lower than the one they gave it in 2019, when it was 6.74. On the other hand, almost all (99%) of those surveyed consider that their health care is covered through public funding, a percentage that includes people assigned to the National Health System but also mutualists.