The development of mental health strategy in Armenia: A review of the activities of the Armenian mental health policy working group

Abstract

 For many years, the health care system of the Republic of Armenia has focused on purely inpatient psychiatric care, which limits the potential for providing services at the community level. Psychiatric care has been exclusively provided in specialised mental health institutions, including hospitals and social psycho-neurological centres.

In 2010, Armenia ratified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Since 2013, by adoption of two national policy papers – the Mental Health Strategy and Concept together with an Action plan – the government made a commitment to start the deinstitutionalisation process and introduce community-based services on a policy level.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the processes recorded in the framework of a deinstitutionalisation process in the Republic of Armenia, its achievements and current issues. The study shows that the process of introducing the model of community-based service in the Republic of Armenia was accompanied by a number of challenges, which were more or less successfully overcome. It is deemed a success because the introduction of a community-based model is now on the government agenda and there is close cooperation with state agencies, as well as the private and public sectors. However, in addition to discriminatory attitudes and societal stigmatisation, the inability to currently operate community-based models due to the absence of relevant state budget allocations and a lack of knowledge and awareness of specialists, state officials and wider public about mental health issues is still a challenge.