The Totana City Council has urged the Murcia Region Health Council to set up a Primary Psychiatric Care Unit in this municipality, which becomes operational immediately with the necessary technical staff to serve the local population. This petition comes in response to the plenary agreement, established unanimously by the Municipal Corporation and at the request of the Municipal Socialist Group, several months ago. According to regional statistics, one in four people has a mental health problem in their lifetime; and the incidence of these diseases is growing steadily in the population and the response of health resources has to be accompanied in proportion. In October 2018, the regional government publicly announced a Mental Health Plan in the Region of Murcia, which established the possibility that, perhaps in Totana and Mazarrón, primary care psychiatric units would be opened; but as it is known, this opening has not taken place. According to the plenary agreement, in Totana there is no resource to detect and alleviate the first symptoms that these diseases reveal, being in most cases treated by the general practitioners of our two Primary Care centers or referred to the Mental Health Center of Lorca. The inconvenience of having to travel to Lorca and the lack of a specific and immediate treatment of the first symptoms means that the percentage of admissions to the Psychiatry unit of the Rafael Méndez hospital is mainly from residents of Totana; Income that, in case of having been treated by a professional in a preventive and fast way, in many cases could be avoided. Águilas and Lorca have these primary care units and this has an effect on the fact that the number of admitted to the hospital unit is much lower in percentage terms, as established in the plenary agreement.
