The health ministry is strengthening crisis units and mobile psychiatric teams to treat more people in severe psychological distress outside hospital, Health Minister Martine Deprez said in a parliamentary answer published on Monday.
Responding to DP MP Corinne Cahen, Deprez identified better coordination of care as the third priority under the 2024–28 National Mental Health Plan. The plan envisages a round-the-clock mobile crisis service and psychiatric consultations designed to be easier to access, with the aim of providing care earlier and reducing hospital stays.
“Developing mobile teams is a priority in strengthening community psychiatry,” Deprez wrote. A Flexible Assertive Community Treatment pilot launched in October 2025 provides intensive multidisciplinary support to people with severe mental-health problems, particularly those who are marginalised or have dropped out of care.
Some of the people these services are designed to reach overlap with groups already encountered through Luxembourg’s public-order system: people affected by homelessness, addiction, severe mental illness or other forms of marginalisation in public space. The government has increasingly treated those situations as requiring health and social intervention alongside policing where enforcement alone cannot resolve the underlying problem.
Another responder
That approach was already explicit in a joint parliamentary answer from Deprez, Interior Minister Léon Gloden and Justice Minister Elisabeth Margue in January. The ministers described drug trafficking as both a health and security threat and said Luxembourg’s response combined preventive, repressive, health and social measures.
The policy has deeper roots. A 2021 government package to tackle drug-related criminality proposed a 24-hour mobile service for acute psychological distress linked to psychiatric illness, behavioural problems or addiction, responding in public places or at home. It also envisaged psychiatric expertise in streetwork teams.
That original mobile-service proposal was later incorporated into health services for homeless people and supported housing for people with chronic psychiatric illness and addiction. It is not the same programme as the mobile teams now being developed under the mental-health plan, but both place health and social care alongside public-order measures.
The overlap does not make crime a mental-health problem. Police remain responsible for crime and violence; the additional services address distress, addiction, homelessness and other situations where enforcement alone may not resolve the underlying need.
Municipal experience points the same way. Esch added a psychiatric nurse to its streetwork team after finding that a substantial number of people encountered by workers had psychiatric disorders, while Luxembourg City operates Streetwork to connect vulnerable people with assistance alongside separate services addressing residents’ concerns about insecurity.
After the crisis
Deprez’s answer shows where the alternative can break down. “While reducing reliance on hospitalisation is a shared objective, the options for referring people to community services remain limited because the system as a whole is becoming increasingly saturated,” Deprez wrote.
She also singled out housing. “Against the backdrop of persistent pressure on Luxembourg’s housing market, the lack of suitable housing is an obstacle to stabilising patients and keeping them in the community,” she wrote. Expansion of services also depends on the availability of qualified staff.
For 2026, the ministry lists €2.01m and 14 full-time-equivalent positions for mobile teams and home interventions, alongside €6.55m for supported psychiatric housing. Luxembourg’s national health insurer, the CNS, separately provides €19m for specialist outpatient psychiatric services.
The practical aim is to reach people earlier, support them where they live and avoid hospital stays where possible. But limited places in community services and delays in discharge are still keeping pressure on hospitals.
