Premises of the psychiatric inpatient unit of the Child Psychiatry Clinic at the National Institute of Children's Diseases, which opened in Bratislava on October 3, 2022. (source: TASR - Jakub Kotian)
More people in Slovakia are seeking mental health help, with eating disorders on the rise and more children being diagnosed with conditions, a new report has revealed.
Data from the National Health Information Centre (NCZI) shows that in 2021, 377,200 people sought help from psychiatrists, up 12,736 on the year before.
From panic to dementia
The most common condition patients presented with were affective disorders, including panic disorder and depression, followed by stress-related and somatic symptom disorders, and organic mental disorders such as dementia.
For all three above-mentioned groups of disorders, more women than men sought treatment. However, male patients were predominant among those presenting for disorders related to mental development and behaviour affected by the use of alcohol and drugs.
In total, psychiatrists performed nearly 1,919,000 medical examinations of people with a diagnosed mental disorder. This was up from 1,852,000 in 2020.
Meanwhile, up to 63,000 people were diagnosed with a mental disorder for the first time in 2021 - a year-on-year increase of 2,000.
Eating disorders on the rise
The report also shows that the number of people diagnosed with less common mental disorders has risen in the last five years with diagnoses of eating disorders increasing 37.7 per cent and a 22.2 per cent rise in mental development disorders in 2021 compared to the five-year average.
The report also highlighted growing mental health problems among children and young people.
Though the highest share of people with a newly diagnosed psychiatric problem was among people aged 75 or above, the highest year-on-year increase in the number of newly-diagnosed patients per 10,000 people in given age groups was recorded among children (17.3 per cent), teenagers (29.2 per cent) and young people in their twenties (14.3 per cent).
Children and teenagers often struggled with behavioural and emotional disorders, while older teenagers suffered from stress-related disorders.
