As part of a wider project on mental health in OECD countries, a series of descriptive profiles have been prepared, intended to provide descriptive, easily comprehensible, highly informative accounts of the mental health systems of OECD countries. These profiles, entitled ‘Mental Health Analysis Profiles’ (MHAPs), will be able to inform discussion and reflection and provide an introduction to and a synthesised account of mental health in a given country. Each MHAP follows the same template, and whilst the MhAPs are stand-alone profiles, loose cross-country comparison using the MhAPs is possible and encouraged.

The Dutch mental health system is highly institutionalised and has a large number of psychiatric beds compared to other OECD countries. Nonetheless, government reforms have aimed at shifting the axis of the system from bed-based hospital services to more integrated mental health services and community-based services. Structural changes to the Dutch mental health system, together with recent government policies that aim to improve access to mental health services, have led to decreasing the treatment gap for mental disorders but also to increasing the expenditures associated with mental health care up until 2011.