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Queen Máxima visits mental health care facility

Queen Maxima

Queen Máxima has paid a visit to the GGZ Noord-Holland-Noord mental health care institution to speak with practitioners about treating patients in their home environments.

The Royal House website said that Queen Máxima also discussed “recovery and personal direction and the provision of digital care and prevention” with the experts during her visit on July 2nd. She discussed the protocols co-developed by the GGZ Noord-Holland-Noord, the Integral Family Teams Youth and the Recovery Supporting Intake, as well.

“I am impressed by the Queen,” said Dick van der Vlugt, a mental health expert at GGZ Noord-Holland-Noord, in a statement on the hospital’s website. “She knows what she is talking about and is involved. She asked specific questions about what recovery is, what the difference is between a normal intake and a recovery support intake and how someone with depression, for example, should seek help. It was really special!”

During her three discussions with the experts, Queen Máxima learned that the experts at GGZ Noord-Holland-Noord tailor their treatment to the wishes of their clients and that “the institution helps people in their own environment but online help is also used to let clients determine when and were they want to work on their health,” according to the Royal House website.

The Integral Family Teams work to put the family at the centre of care and provide them with “a multiple complex request for help.” The teams work to put together a large network of support for their patients, “such as family, neighbours, school, sports and the municipality” as a way to “prevent hospitalisation and reduce the risk of passing on family problems from generation to generation.”

One of the hospital’s psychiatrist and conversation leaders, Marijke van Putten, said on the hospital’s Facebook page that “It’s great that the Queen paid us a working visit. There is still a stigma on mental problems and the fact that the Queen shows interest in mental healthcare helps to make mental problems negotiable.”

Queen Máxima has visited other GGZ facilities this year and her encounters have seen her speaking about mental health and COVID-19 at the Parnassia Groep location in The Hague and holding a video call with the team and patients with the GGZ Digiteam in April.

About author

Jess Ilse is the Assistant Editor at Royal Central. She specialises in the British, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish Royal Families and has been following royalty since Queen Elizabeth II’s Golden Jubilee. Jess has provided commentary for media outlets in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Jess works in communications and her debut novel THE MAJESTIC SISTERS will publish in Fall 2024.