This Friday, Parliament generally approved the initiatives of Livre and BE to create a national line for the prevention of suicide and self-harm, as well as to conduct a new epidemiological study of mental health.
The projects were generally approved unanimously and will be sent for discussion to the specialty committee.
The Livre bill advocates the creation of “a national suicide and self-harm prevention hotline that should be dedicated, easily identifiable, accessible 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and completely free.”
BE intends to update data from the first national epidemiological survey of mental health, published in 2013.
“(…) This legislative initiative aims to carry out a new epidemiological study that will update the data, try to overcome some of the limitations identified in the previous study, and also investigate the determinants of such a high prevalence of mental disorders in Portugal. population,” says the blockers’ draft resolution.
In turn, Chega’s proposals to prevent suicide among young people and in the security forces, as well as BU’s proposals to create a prevention line in the National Health Service (NHS) were rejected by the socialist majority.
Ahead of the vote, Livre and the Bloc de Esquerda defended the creation of queues to prevent suicide and self-harm, which would operate 24 hours a day for a year.
Chega and the SDP said on the same day that they would approve the initiatives, and the PS recalled the measures it had taken, such as increasing the number of psychologists in the SNS, and sent a response to Linha SNS24.
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
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