A cross-cultural comparison of mental health care delivery in Athens and Groningen.

Until recently mental health care in Greece was mainly delivered by old traditional mental hospitals and few outpatient services. In order to induce the process of change the University of Athens started to experiment with a community mental health service. In order to study what has been achieved in a relatively short time, data relating to the delivery of care cohorts of patients from a pilot area in Athens and from an area in the north of the Netherlands were compared. The overall new contact rate was much higher in the Groningen area, except for the category of psychoneuroses and personality disorders. Patients with a psychosis received more intensive treatment and left the services at a later stage in Athens. Differences of patterns of care in other diagnostic and age groups are discussed.