GGZ WNB (Mental Health Care Westelijk Noord Brabant) is the healthcare institution in West Brabant that offers help with psychological and psychiatric problems. The care offering of GGZ WNB is very broad. They offer a preventive course until admission, from short therapy to long-term residential guidance. People of all ages and cultures can also go to GGZ WNB. GGZ WNB also helps clients to participate in society. What does GGZ WNB do to combat stigmatization? GGZ WNB is a broad mental health institution. According to the book Mensenwerk (Bassant & Bassant-Hensen pp. 104), these are institutions in which more or less the full range of mental health care services are offered.
Typical target groups
GGZ WNB offers help to people with psychological disorders. This may include children (and their parents), young adults (18-25 years), adults and the elderly. They also offer special courses and support groups for family members and caregivers.
Method and activities of GGZ WNB
The care offering of GGZ WNB is very broad. There are many different treatment options within GGZ WNB. I will mention a number of them: help outside the hospital (outpatient) and within it (clinical), intermediate forms such as psychiatric intensive home care and part-time treatment, short-term and long-term care, individual therapy and group therapy, care in an open situation with complete freedom, and care in a closed situation with a lot of protection.
Prevention is a core task of GGZ WNB. This is about preventing psychological problems, but also about ensuring that the disorder does not worsen. In addition, GGZ WNB is also involved in identification and relapse prevention.
GGZ WNB also provides intervention care for people who do not seek help on their own. This concerns risk groups such as repeat offenders, victims of domestic violence, homeless young people, young immigrants and lonely elderly people. They often have problems in multiple areas of life.
Collaboration partners
Because psychological and psychiatric problems affect all areas of life, GGZ WNB collaborates with numerous organizations in and outside healthcare. This includes organizations for mental health care, home care, nursing and care homes, addiction care, social work, social care, youth care, (special) education, employment services, care for the mentally handicapped, police and justice, municipalities, housing associations, welfare work, health centers and hospitals, organizations of immigrants and refugees.
GGZ WNB also comes into the picture for people who receive care elsewhere if their knowledge has added value. GGZ WNB believes that people should get what they need, regardless of organizational boundaries.
Objective and vision
GGZ WNB offers help to people with various psychiatric disorders of all ages. They start from the request for help and look for the most appropriate care. They recognize that there are multiple causes of psychological problems and psychiatric disorders. The cause may lie in biological, psychological and social aspects.
Procedure
The GP reports the client to GGZ WNB. Within three weeks, the client will receive an invitation for an intake interview at the Regional Diagnostic Center (RDC) in Bergen op Zoom or Roosendaal. The intake interview then takes place. This involves discussing what the client’s problems are and what they are related to. Treatment advice is then given. I have already mentioned the various treatments that are applied in the Method and activities. During these treatments, attention is already paid to the return to society. The treatment is gradually reduced and relapse prevention is offered after treatment.
Normative professionalism and/or diversity
GGZ WNB supports people with long-term psychological problems with living and daytime activities, work and social contacts, so that they can live as normally as possible. They also offer tailor-made care, they listen to the client and realize that every client is unique.
GGZ WNB works in a social-agogic way
- The employees of GGZ WNB intervene in a targeted manner from outside the client system. The relationship has been entered into deliberately, planned and for the sake of guidance for a limited period. The psychologist is aware of what he does and what he does not do.
- GGZ WNB tries to arrive at a joint description of the situation and the goals to be achieved through a dialogic working relationship with the client.
- GGZ WNB helps individuals, groups, organizations and societies to solve problems or questions in social functioning, to the extent possible and desirable.
- GGZ WNB simultaneously focuses on helping to solve problems and on strengthening people’s self-regulatory capacity so that they can deal with new problems and situations in the future.
- GGZ WNB takes into account and recognizes certain environmental conditions and then tries to influence them, as change does not always have to take place within the individual.
Agogic action is the combination of these five characteristics. GGZ WNB therefore meets the social welfare characteristics.
What does GGZ WNB do to combat stigmatization?
Once a year there is a public day on mental health. This public day is called ‘Open Mind’. People can go here with questions about antidepressants, for example, there is a discussion about dilemmas surrounding assisted suicide in psychiatry and people can experience how stigmatization works in psychiatry. Various healthcare institutions want to contribute to breaking the taboo on psychological problems. The institutions do this by being ‘open minded’ about psychological problems. GGZ WNB is involved in this. By participating in such a public day, GGZ WNB can provide information that will make people look at patients with a mental disorder in a different way. After all, stigma is partly caused by people’s ignorance of mental disorders.