Only less than a third of mental patients in the Czech Republic receive specialist care, and according to the National Institute of Mental Health, more than half a million people visit psychological and psychiatric clinics every year. Due to the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, the pressure has only increased. The capacity of medical services is completely inadequate and experts are already talking about the collapse of the entire system.

This situation was at least partially resolved with the opening of the Mental Rehabilitation Center in Beroun, whose main focus is on outpatient inpatient treatment. This is what is missed most in the Czech Republic. At the same time, this hospital was supposed to be the most modern psychiatric hospital in Central Europe.

Although the ceremonial ribbon was only cut on Tuesday and the hospital is scheduled to open to its first patients in July, the hospital already has hundreds of applicants. Today’s opening was also attended by Prime Minister Petr Fiala (ODS) and Health Minister Vlastimil Válek (TOP 09).

“The Czech Republic really needs it. Mental health services have long been one of the weakest areas of the Czech health care system. Although psychiatric care reform has been underway in the Czech Republic for several years, we still face problems. “One of them is the lack of workplace capacity, which causes very long waits to see experts, even months,” said Fiala before the opening of the center. The Czech Republic also has few professionals per population.

According to Válk, mental health is a government priority. “I don’t care who builds it, whether it’s the city, state, county or private sector. This does not happen in the health sector. “It is divided into available and unavailable and into high quality and low quality,” the minister said.

According to Fiala, the Czech Republic has a growing debt for psychiatric care, which is limiting it. “It’s great that workplaces are responding to it, countries are responding to it, but more and more the private sector is responding to it,” Fiala said.

Behind the center in Beroun is the holding company AKESO owned by businessman Sotirios Zavalanis, which invested around 1.2 billion crowns in its construction.

This hospital has a capacity of up to 230 beds and the capacity will be increased gradually, as long as this does not affect the quality of service. According to Martin Hollé, deputy mental health assistant at Beroun Rehabilitation Hospital, there are around 8,000 beds in psychiatric wards across the Czech Republic, and around 1,500 of them are in acute care. We will not destroy the system, but we will make a significant contribution to the region,” explained Hollý.

Some beds will be covered by insurance, but dozens of them will be available at your own expense. “If we provide care outside of health insurance, we respect the value that the health insurance company will pay,” says Hollý.

However, psychiatric treatment is expensive. “What insurance companies pay for health services is a few thousand a day,” adds Hollý. However, other patients can also come to the facility on an outpatient basis.

The center does not want to follow the same path as traditional psychology and psychiatry. Other disciplines, such as physiotherapy or occupational therapy, will also help make treatment more effective. This was thought about during construction. These facilities are equipped, for example, with a swimming pool, gym, fitness center or creative studio, so that patients do not need to spend all their time in the room.

The company is also thinking about security issues. Unlike older psychiatric hospitals, the hospital in Beroun does not have bars on the windows. Instead, the holding invests, for example, in unbreakable glass, security systems or furniture modified in such a way that the patient cannot harm himself.

This new device will be innovative in many ways. Experts will work with new technologies –⁠ for example with virtual reality or circadian biodynamic lighting, which approximates natural light and has a positive effect on patients.

According to experts, there is an immediate and large-scale increase in acute psychological and psychiatric care capacity across the system. According to Peter Winkler, director of the National Institute of Mental Health and a specialist in public mental health, mental illness accounts for about 15 percent of all household illnesses, but only four percent of people receive treatment.

In contrast, in Western countries, the share of medical services provided to patients with mental illnesses exceeds ten percent of the total volume.