Overview
- Vigo’s health service opened psychology consults inside five health centers, where clinicians will deliver short courses of therapy for mild to moderate conditions such as anxiety, grief and caregiver stress.
- Sergas now says the network will reach 11 clinical psychologists by 2030, using hub clinics to cover nearby practices rather than placing one specialist in every center.
- That scale would equal roughly two psychologists per 100,000 adults, below the profession’s suggested minimum of one per 20,000 people.
- The area also made an electronic teleconsult with psychiatry mandatory before referrals, a triage step that lets specialists review cases, request tests or suggest interim treatment and that some family doctors say curbs their referral autonomy.
- Pressure on services remains high, with CHUVI reporting about 103 days for a first psychiatry visit and 11,600 new mental‑health patients in 2024, and officials say earlier therapy in primary care could cut waits and reduce reliance on psychotropic drugs.