Warsaw. The Yellow March passed through the capital

On Thursday, the “Yellow March” in defense of mental health centers took place on the streets of Warsaw. Protesters are demanding increased financial resources for mental health care.

The demonstrators protested against changes in the operation of mental health centers, the pilot of which ends in June 2025. The Ministry of Health and the National Health Fund, among others. during the meetings of the mental health council at the Minister of Health, they announced changes to the CZP financing model, which is currently based on a lump sum transferred by the National Health Fund per resident, e.g. of a district.

Protest in front of the Sejm

The demonstration stopped in front of the Sejm, where anyone interested could speak.

– We can still prevent the dentistization of psychiatry – argued Prof. Andrzej Kokoszka. He emphasized that dentistry is an area of ​​health care in which patients often receive private treatment, and the same threatens psychiatry. He emphasized that changes in the financing of mental health centers will lead to the division of patients into rich and poor.

Psychotherapist Krzysztof Jedliński said that the reduction in CZP funding means that only doctors and nurses will remain in the psychiatric care system.

Also speaking were: recovery assistants who fear that a reduction in CZP funding will mean they will lose their jobs and patients will again be treated primarily in hospitals.

Representatives of the demonstrators handed over a document to the Speaker of the Sejm, Szymon Hołownia, in which they demand, among other things, increasing the financing of mental health care in 2025 to 6% and in 2027 to 7%. total health expenditure and the creation of the National Mental Health Center (KOZP) in the first half of 2025, which would be a budget unit subordinate to the Minister of Health.

Yellow March in Warsaw

Mental Health Congress

Before the march, an Extraordinary Mental Health Congress took place for over two hours, attended by several hundred doctors, recovery assistants and other employees of the community psychiatry sector, patients and representatives of, among others, Ombudsman, Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights and the National Trade Union of Doctors.

Participants of the congress and march fear that the Ministry of Health will make decisions regarding mental health centers that will limit their financing and threaten their continued operation. They propose, among other things, not to limit the activities of CZP, but to improve their operating model on the principles tested in the pilot. They also want to establish a national center to monitor the transformation of psychiatry and develop precise frameworks and principles of operation based on the evaluation of the pilot, and to increase spending on psychiatry to 6%. health care expenditures.

Declarations of the ministry

Jakub Gołąb, spokesman for the Ministry of Health, said on Thursday that the financing of mental health centers after June 30, 2025 will be maintained at at least the same level, but throughout the country, and not only in half, as in the pilot.

Deputy Minister of Health Wojciech Konieczny commented on the matter this week. He assured that the Ministry of Health does not envisage any changes that would lead to a reduction in the financing of mental health centers, but the plans assume an increase in the costs of CZP operations. In his opinion, financing psychiatric care requires an increase in expenditure by approximately PLN 1.5-2 billion.

The pilot of mental health centers began in 2018. It is based on the concept of community psychiatry, i.e. a shift from hospital treatment (intended for patients in acute conditions) to care organized close to the patient in smaller medical assistance centers, prevention of mental crises, and when they occur – a quick restoration of balance.