Mental health care network: Comparative study between Brazil and Catalonia

Abstract

The study aims to analyze and compare the networks of mental health care in Brazil and Catalonia through the macrostructural components of the policy. This is a review of the guiding documents of mental health policy in Brazil and the Autonomous Community of Catalonia in Spain. Both territories have laws that support the community-based model of mental health. In Catalonia, the policy is built in a more technical and vertical way, influenced by the WHO, while in Brazil the construction is ascending with broad social participation in the definition of actions. Financing in Catalonia is greater both in global health and, specifically, in mental health; in the SUS, mental health is an underfunded area within an underfunded system. In both, the focus of financing is changing, with more investment in community services, but Catalonia still spends most of the funding for hospitals. The management model in Brazil is still, fundamentally, direct management and in Catalonia, indirect. Both have a wide and diversified network of services, but need to deal with the contingent of residents of Psychiatric Hospitals and advance in evaluation mechanisms that respond to the complexity of the policy.