Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-09-05-Speech-2-359"
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"en.20060905.27.2-359"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I should like to join the chorus of good wishes to Mr Bowis, who has proved once more that, for him, health policy is a passion rather than a duty.
Successful policy and successful psychotherapy have one thing in common: both require a great deal of openness, honesty, patience and commitment. We are discussing here an issue that is interesting and widespread yet largely neglected in the European Community: mental health.
The WHO defines health as a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing. It is also realistic to achieve these three objectives in this order. When dealing with mental health, we note a dramatic increase in psychological illnesses in the Union. There is a wide palette of symptoms, causes, diagnoses and therapies in terms of both pathogenicity and molecular biology: depression, schizophrenia, borderline psychosis, bulimia, anorexia, phobias, neuroses and mania, to name but a few.
I do not wish to go into detail on toxicological and environmental causes here – that would be a whole dossier in itself. I would like to show some possible ways in which we, the European Union, could help in the field of prevention, ways in which we could reduce the burden of suffering of those with mental ill health, could recognise the early stages of the illness in time and could thus prevent the onset.
I should like to give just a few statistics. One in four will fall ill; there are 58 000 suicides and ten times as many attempted suicides each year. We see suicide as something difficult, demonic, impossible to grasp, and feel obliged to prevent it.
Suffering from a psychological disorder means being stigmatised, whilst psychological illness often involves feelings of inferiority, and the history of Europe has often seen psychiatric institutions misused for political purposes. We have the opportunity to call on our national governments to do more than before. This call does not mean we are interfering in subsidiarity, but that we want to suggest action points and demonstrate a pan-European approach for enhancing human dignity and reducing discrimination, for example healthy families within which children can grow up and equal opportunities throughout the Union, both within Europe and within the Member States.
Our strategy must comprise comprehensive treatment close to patients’ home areas. The treatment must be holistic: that is, must involve both body, mind and social environment. Compulsory treatment can be considered only as a last resort, and abuse of alcohol and both legal and illegal drugs is to be validated and included in this global approach. The focus here is on prevention.
Today, with this report, we are opening a new chapter, and it is to be hoped that it will soon be enlarged upon in a White Paper."@en1
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