Finland faces strain in mental health service access

Vasilica Cristea, a young Romanian woman who has been living in Finland for a few years now, struggled in 2021 when she first tried to reach out to the public mental health care services. She went through a long process, having to wait up to six weeks to get an appointment with a therapist. 

Before that, she was used as a throw-ball in the system, referred to, and sent to other healthcare professionals. The young woman had to repeatedly explain her issues each time she was re-referred. The continued changing of healthcare workers made Cristea feel unseen, unimportant, and not taken seriously.

"What’s the point of reaching out to the health care if it makes you feel even worse?” She adds.

Cristea first had to go through the public healthcare system to obtain a diagnosis before she could start looking for a psychotherapist. Without a diagnosis, access to therapy was not possible. Once she finally received one, she was able to begin her search. 

The search for a therapist

"The public system doesn't help with finding a therapist. It was a long process for me, I had to call 45 different therapists" she explains.

Many calls ended abruptly, and she says she faced discrimination when people heard she was speaking English. After a month of searching, Cristea finally secured her first appointment.

"In the crisis that I was in, having to make all these calls was very exhausting. I couldn't cope with it" she says. 

Vasilica Cristea's search for a therapist took an unexpected amount of time, spanning five months. She was already struggling to stay afloat with her mental health, and having to wait to get proper treatment was an additional burden. Long waiting times are an ongoing issue. 

Mental ill-health can have devastating effects on individuals, families and communities, and drive economic costs of up to 4% of GDP, according to a report from OECD. 

"It’s like they got their degree from a cereal box"

Sitting down in a modern library in Helsinki, Finland's capital, Hilja Laurila shares her story and experiences with the mental healthcare system in Finland.

She describes it as “not very good”, unprofessional, and she felt like she wasn’t being taken seriously. She tried both public and private healthcare, both disappointing to her, even though the private service was a little better.

Laurila thinks the main problem sits in the therapist than in the system itself, “the therapists didn’t understand anything, it’s like they got their degree from a cereal box.” She recommends peers support groups as a better alternative to share experiences and feeling understood. “Personally, peer support was more helpful than professional advice”.

Her story is far from unique. And across Europe, the same frustration echoes, with nearly one in two people having experienced emotional or psychosocial problems in the past year. Finland, despite its glowing global image, is no exception. 

The European dimension

Europe is currently witnessing a growing mental health challenge. According to the report “Health at a Glance Europe 2022”, by the state of health in the EU cycle, half of young people stated that their needs for mental health care were not being met. In comparison, it was 23 percent among adults. A survey from 2023 among EU citizens finds that 25 percent on average in the EU report that they have faced issues when trying to access mental health care. 

In Finland, 48 percent report that they have experienced mental illness. Only 38 percent of those people said that they didn't receive any professional treatment in the last 12 months.

-Behind these numbers are people like Vasilica Cristea and Hilja Laurila...

Why is there long waiting times?

There are many reasons that are affecting mental health care access; it almost sounds like an ongoing cycle. Shortage of staff, high demand, the system adapting to the recent reforms, regional inequalities, overloaded primary care, and even bureaucracy, which makes the process much longer. 

In 2023, Finland initiated a national reform program that was funded by the Finnish state. After initiating the reform, health services became more centralized, and the financial budget was moved from municipalities to the national budget, according to Finland’s country health profile, published by the European Commission in 2023. 

Instead of having many small municipalities running their own health and social services, responsibility was moved to larger regional units to make the system more uniform and efficient.

At the same time, workforce shortages have grown. Finland has fewer doctors and more nurses than the EU average, and there are notable differences regionally in how doctors are distributed. 

Because of the shortage of doctors, there has been a growing effort to shift tasks from doctors to nurses. These shifts include prescribing medicines, consultations in primary care, and more advanced roles in hospital care.

People have different and more needs

Nuorten Ystävät ("Friends of the Youth") is an organization that has four Clubhouses in northern Finland. Clubhouse Roihula in Rovaniemi is one of those, and is an alternative for people seeking help. With approximately 450 members, the Finnish clubhouse offers a daily routine, structure through participation, activities for group members, and individual support. They help with studies, employment, or just give people a sense of community. 

The needs for support have also increased. Sanna Soramäki, a job coach at Clubhouse Roihula, isn’t certain what’s driving the rise, but she thinks people in general feel worse than before. 

“It might be modern society, significant cuts in the social security money that the government provides, an increase in the cost of living, and the job market has also weakened.” Soramäki explains.

Clubhouse Roihula in Rovaniemi welcomes everyone, who experiences a need for special support.“We have different kinds of people with different needs here; We don't ask for diagnoses, we welcome everyone who experiences a need for special support.”

Everyone decides how much they want to tell about themselves, and can come as they are. According to Soramäki, members also have differing goals when they first come to the clubhouse. She explains that while some come hoping to find a job, for others, simply having a place to go outside their home is already a major step.

Jarno Hämäläinen has been living in Rovaniemi for the past two and a half years and started going to Roihula two weeks ago. Even though Hämäläinen has only used the offer for a short period of time, it already means a lot to him.

"You can be yourself here, you get to do things, go to places, and you see and meet people who have the same experiences that you have.” He explains. 

Jarno Hämäläinen now goes to the clubhouse every day, preparing food and tea in the kitchen with others. Because of the sense of community, he is now able to lower his guard and learn how to trust again.

The “world’s happiest country”

Hilja Laurila states that she is skeptical about the title "happiest country in the world context" and how Finland is viewed as a “utopia,” which to her, is not the reality. “Finns like when Finland is mentioned internationally, but I don’t think everyone agrees with the ‘happiest’ label."

Finland consistently ranks near the top in social support, meaning most people feel they have someone they can rely on. However, if we look closer at the loneliness barometer report of the Finnish Red Cross from 2025, almost two in three (67%) of the respondents feel isolated at least at times. The younger the respondent is, or the lower their income, the more often they experience a sense of isolation.

This shows that a country can perform very well in the conditions that support happiness while still facing important social challenges that affect daily life.

A silent crisis

He describes mental health in Finland as being taboo and a hardship to show and talk about emotions, especially as a man. Hämäläinen shares that being a man in Finland means being tough by masking your feelings. 

“It's weird because I have always been sensitive and felt a lot of things, but I was never allowed to feel or show my emotions.” Before Hämäläinen discovered the clubhouse Roihula, he used to hide his feelings, stating that he was happy all the time. According to him, it can be hard to speak up about mental health, as you can get portrayed as weak or lazy.

Sanna Soramäki explains that one of the main issues and reasons why people come to the clubhouses is loneliness. "The smaller the village or the communities, the bigger the fear of stigma is." She thinks that loneliness is something Finns don't talk much about and is kind of a taboo topic. 

What’s being done on a national level? 

Finland is implementing a few solutions to keep its country moving. The “therapy guarantee” is already a big step towards managing the long waiting time. Starting from May 1, 2025, children and young people under the age of 23 must have access to certain mental health services within one month of the need for such services being identified. 

The government has also planned to invest €500 million in Kela (Finland’s social security office) in 2023–2027 to reimburse the use of private health services. The aim is to reduce the demand for public primary healthcare in well-being services counties and in that way strengthen primary healthcare.

YLE, Finland’s national public broadcasting company, reveals that this investment has required three times more tax money, now spent on private doctor subsidies. Yet, visits have risen by only about 2 percent. Mika Kortelainen, professor of health economics at the University of Turku and a researcher at the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL), stated that based on the numbers, the subsidy reform appears to have failed.

Finland has also started to implement a new mental health strategy, a ten-year National Mental Health Strategy program for Suicide Prevention was launched in 2020, recognizing the importance of mental health as a resource that should be supported. The Strategy is based on five broad goals: 

1. Recognizing mental health as human capital; 

2. Promoting the mental health of children and young people; 

3. Recognizing mental health as a human right; 

4. Promoting appropriate and broad-based mental health services; 

5. Ensuring proper mental health management, including through cross-sectoral activities and regular monitoring of progress. 

Under this Strategy, Finland aims to increase the resources available for mental health services in primary care and to strengthen coordination between primary care and more specialized care.

Because the May 1 2025, therapy-guarantee law is still too recent to show measurable effects, and because neither the Kela financing reform nor the 2020–2030 Mental Health Strategy have yet produced strong, publicly available evidence of clear impact, it remains difficult to assess how effective Finland’s current solutions truly are at reducing long waiting times.                                                              But at least, according to VAKE’s 2025 report, the local authority for social and health services in Vantaa and Kerava, service availability and user experience improved noticeably during 2025. This suggests that some reforms and service development efforts are having positive effects. 

What alternatives are available? What can you do to get help faster? 

There are still different alternatives available for people seeking help. The crisis helpline and 24/7 support services are the easiest and fastest services you can reach out to. The national Crisis Helpline 09 2525 0116 offers immediate and free talk help for people in crisis and their families and friends on Mondays (4 pm to 8 pm) and Thursdays – Fridays (9 am to 1 pm). 

Jarno Hämäläinen has one piece of advice for people who are struggling with mental health: “Speak and get help, find your kind of people with whom you can be yourself.”