Finding your way in the Dutch Mental Health System

Recently, PsyGlobal interviewed Olga Kurek, a Ukrainian mental health professional, about her journey and insights into working in the Dutch mental health system. Her experiences offer valuable advice for other Ukrainian professionals looking to continue their mental health career while in the Netherlands.

Olga Kurek is a 35-year-old Ukrainian mental health professional living in Amsterdam with her husband and dog, where she relocated three years ago, just before the war. Before Olga moved to the Netherlands, she lived in different countries across Europe and the U.S., studying and working in corporate finance and management consulting. After almost a decade working in the business, she consciously transitioned into coaching and psychology. She started a post-graduate training coaching program at the International Coaching Academy in Australia (“Online, as it was a bit too far and I don’t like big animals”), and parallel to that, she studied a Bachelor’s in psychology in Odesa, Ukraine, to gain a more in-depth understanding of the human psyche. She also completed a CBT study designed especially for coaches and counselors at Ukraine’s only accredited CBT training institute for mental health professionals to round her professional transition. 

Other paths towards working in mental healthcare 

When the war started, it did not immediately appeal to Olga to use her background in psychology to work with Ukrainian displaced people who arrived in the Netherlands. She felt insecure about her knowledge, and she did not feel prepared enough. She did, however, work as a project manager for PsyGlobal, putting her project skills into practice to help her compatriots indirectly. In this role, she learned about the other options for working in mental healthcare besides being a basic psychologist in a clinical (GGZ) setting. 

Olga is now working as a counselor / mental health coach (“I try not to stick to the titles anymore. I provide psychological support to Ukrainian displaced people”) for the Rotterdam-based foundation Mano (Stichting Mano). She also had an engagement at one of the largest Dutch GGZ organizations that, among others, provides preventive psychological support to employees of Dutch organizations. 

Looking back on the first days of a new project 

Before joining Mano, Olga worked at one of the largest Dutch Mental Health Organisations, providing preventive psychological support to employees of Dutch organizations. This was her first experience and presented certain challenges. She initially felt lost. She had to quickly figure out how the work needed to be structured and what was expected from her – she was just learning by doing. She got suggestions from her employer about how many sessions she would have with her client and how much direct and indirect time was available. However, onboarding an external mental health professional seemed not to be set in stone. All in all, it was challenging. It was unclear who was responsible for what and who you needed to contact with what kind of questions. Olga did not know who felt responsible for her or who was supporting her. 

It was Olga’s proactive personality that helped her in this specific example. She just asked a lot of questions. That led to a supervisor being assigned to her, someone she could discuss the case with, who helped her with coordination and reporting. 

Prepare and ask questions

That’s Olga’s first advice for other Ukrainian Mental Health Professionals: Prepare and ask A LOT of questions: 

In the Netherlands, employers assume that if you don’t ask questions, you know what you are doing. Autonomy is a big thing here. They give you a lot of freedom, but that also means they tend not to take much time to explain things. While coming from a different country, even with 20 years of experience, all is again new. 

So, ask questions. Prepare a list of questions to bring on your first day. What is the plan, how do I start, what do I need, what kind of tools would be helpful, how does this work on the technical or administrative side and who is my “go-to” person when I need support. 

Ask for proper onboarding. Even if they don’t have it, sit together and think it through. 

Make sure to clarify all of this in the beginning, not throughout the process. Then, it becomes overwhelming and unnecessarily frustrating.

“You can be very confident about how to counsel a person, but you don’t know the rest.”

You may be lucky to find an organization where your manager or supervisor feels very responsible and will proactively help you. Still, you may also find yourself in a situation where nobody steps up to help you. That’s never because they don’t want to help you; it’s just that they don’t know you need help. Your colleagues might have no clue that things are different in Ukraine and that you are not used to working in the ‘Dutch’ way. So, once again, ask questions. This might be challenging, not least for your ego, as it requires admitting that there are things you don’t know, but it will help you throughout the rest of your career. 

Adapt to Dutch Reporting Standards

A very important part of therapy in the Netherlands is reporting. This is due to insurance matters and keeping your supervisor updated, but it’s also important for you as the therapist to look back on the session and prepare for the following session. The reporting tools are usually Dutch, so that can be challenging. Since there are usually no formal reporting requirements in Ukraine, this was also something to learn from scratch. 

“I had to learn to make the decision which of my scribbles would go into the report and what would stay for me”

Olga can speak and write in Dutch, so for her, the challenge was more about the structure and the amount she had to report. She never received a clear instruction on reporting, she just learned by doing and looking at how colleagues wrote their reports. In the beginning, she spent too much time on the reports as she had to develop the structure and the method herself, and there was not much time for reporting (indirect time) in the Dutch mental health system. That was very challenging, and it still is sometimes. 

“You need to get the skill of quickly identifying from everything that you’ve heard within 50 minutes of the conversation what is most relevant for the report and for your supervisor to know.” 

An opportunity to grow personally and professionally

Working in the Netherlands did not only change Olga’s perspectives but also broadened her network. It also changed her view on psychology: “In Ukraine, I perceived psychology as a more humanistic science. It was more about self-development and personal transformation, changing who you are so you can live your life better.” In the Netherlands, psychology is more about treating a disease – more medicalized. It’s a precise science, and all treatments are research-based. This makes working in the Netherlands an opportunity to learn and grow professionally by learning new psychological approaches and expanding methodological knowledge. So embrace that opportunity. It will not only boost your competence but also your confidence.