The Swedish Association for Social and Mental Health has long criticized a psychiatry in decline in Norrbotten where they believe many patients have suffered. The association has agreed with Region Norrbotten on a treatment plan that recently came into effect. Region Norrbotten is increasing staffing and care places within psychiatric inpatient care, with more people than usual currently needing psychiatric care.
Since the new inpatient care places opened, the situation has improved according to psychiatry chiefs at Sunderby Hospital. All 49 inpatient care places have been available for the past month. Today, eight additional care places are opening within inpatient care in Sunderbyn.
The treatment plan is intended to be followed from caregivers up to senior physicians. In southern Norrbotten, a psychosocial team was already started in 2022 with Piteå river valley as the catchment area. The concept has now spread northward and there is also a special team working with Sami health.
It is a political decision to introduce the psychosocial teams, with primary care's southern operational area, Piteå river valley, as a pilot. Patients who are mentally unwell receive better care thanks to mobile acute psychiatric units. The first MAE units are in Piteå and Sunderbyn.
The goal of the project is to strengthen ambulance care in Norrbotten with three mobile MAE teams. However, in Gällivare, they have not yet started due to staffing difficulties. Spot is a new group that will become Region Norrbotten's new spearhead in a hard-pressed department.
Spot is a team of ten that will constitute the specialist psychiatric nursing team in Luleå and Boden. Over the weekend, more patients than usual were admitted to the psychiatric inpatient care places in the county. The increased care pressure is not linked to the process of introducing specialist psychiatric nursing teams.
It is quite common for more people to need psychiatric inpatient care in the autumn. The expansion efforts aim to provide more comprehensive support across the region, addressing both immediate needs and systemic improvements.