A recent opinion piece in Knack draws attention to a blind spot in the Belgian health and budget debate: the enormous societal cost of untreated mental health issues. While public debate often focuses on long-term disability, control mechanisms, or the role of health insurance funds, the core question remains neglected too often: why do so many people drop out for the long term?
The figures are well known. Mental health disorders are a major cause of long-term disability, especially among younger adults. According to international and Belgian estimates, poor mental health costs our country approximately 5% of GDP annually. This cost is not only found in benefits or hospital care, but also in productivity loss, presenteeism, relapse, and delayed treatment.
For BFAP, the conclusion is clear: Belgium must invest much more heavily in specialized outpatient mental healthcare. International recommendations from the WHO, OECD, and European institutions, among others, have pointed in the same direction for years: care must be accessible, community-based, and available in a timely manner. This does not mean more fragmentation, but a stronger care model in which psychiatrists, GPs, psychologists, and other healthcare providers can collaborate structurally.
Today, this outpatient care is too often the weak link. Waiting lists are growing, practices are closing their registrations, specialized psychotherapy remains financially inaccessible for many patients, and outpatient psychiatrists often work without sufficient support or structural funding. As a result, care arrives late, at a point when symptoms have become more complex and the societal cost has already risen sharply.
BFAP therefore advocates for three priorities: a reimbursement framework for specialized psychotherapy and trauma treatment, a structural model for collaborative care between GP, psychologist, and psychiatrist, and proper funding of outpatient psychiatry as fully-fledged medical specialist care.
Investing in outpatient mental healthcare is not a symbolic measure. It is a necessary choice to reduce hospitalizations, long-term disability, and human suffering. A policy that takes mental health seriously must not only speak about prevention and inclusion, but also fund the specialized care that patients need when symptoms become serious or complex.
For BFAP, this is the core of the mission: making outpatient psychiatry visible, strengthening it, and anchoring it structurally within modern mental healthcare. Not as peripheral care, but as an essential part of a just, effective, and sustainable healthcare system.
Read the original Knack article here.