A study released by the Entidade Reguladora da Saúde (ERS), on access to mental health care shows the total number of patients waiting on consultations is 17,844, of which 57 percent of “high priority” cases (677), 45 percent of “priority” cases (1,662) and 29 percent of patients with “normal” priority (15,505), had already exceeded the Tempo Máximo de Resposta Garantido (maximum response time).

For patients considered to be “high priority” the indicated TMRG is 30 days, for “priority” patients it is 60 days and for “normal” priority patients the TMRG is 120 days.

In accordance with data released by ERS, the first 21,786 consultations in the area of mental health were carried out by SNS hospitals in the first half of the year, of which 85 percent were considered to be “normal” priority, 12 percent “priority” and three percent were considered “high priority”.

The study also indicated that 39 percent of patients were attended outside the legally established TMRG, becoming “more serious” in cases for patients considered to be “high priority”.

The ERS stated that in cases of “high priority” and “priority” patients, the mental health non-compliance rates are 10 and 14 percentage points higher than the global average, which reveals “the issue with non-compliance with the TMRG is considerably worse in the area of mental health”.

The TMRG non-compliance rate, considering all priority levels is around 11 percentage points lower in consultations of mental health compared to the rate recorded in all consultations carried out in NHS hospitals (all specialities).

With regard to psychiatry consultations, according to the ERS, the quantity of consultations has “grown steadily since 2018”, at an annual rate of 5 percent, with an inflection recorded in 2020 in the Lisbon, Vale do Tejo and Alentejo regions.

Throughout the entire period analysed, from 2018 to 2022, the number of child and adolescent consultations in the area of psychiatry remained globally constant, at around 11 percent, the ERS highlighted a drop in the number of those cases in the Algarve in 2022, from 10 percent to 5 percent.

In the area of psychological consultations, the ERS indicated there are only 14 hospitals that receive patients referred from the SNS primary healthcare network for consultation in this speciality. There is no hospital unit in the Algarve that receives patients from this SNS network.

During the period analysed, the number of psychology consultations carried out in SNS hospitals grew every year (less in 2020), at an average annual growth rate of 12 percent. The Central region of the country was the one with the highest growth rate, with the number of consultations increasing by an average of 32 percent annually.

In contrast to consultations, the number of mental health hospitalisations decreased on average by 2 percent per year nationally. However, the ERS points out that there was a “sharp reduction” in the hospitalisations in 2020, followed by an increase in the following years. At a regional level, this reduction in 2020 was mainly in the regions of the North, Lisbon and Vale do Tejo.