Reflections on the 1st Catalan Congress of Mental Health
Ada Ruiz. Vice President of the FCCSM
What is mental health?
In mental health, we are all essential
Emili Mira Memorial
Barcelona, February 18, 19, and 20, 1999
The 1st Catalan Congress on Mental Health – Emili Mira Memorial with the support of the intercollegiate platform, which included the Official College of Physicians of Barcelona (COMB), the College of Nurses and Nursing Assistants of Barcelona, the College of Psychologists of Catalonia, and the Official College of Social Work of Catalonia, it was held at the COMB, with the technical support of its Congress Department, on February 18, 19, and 20, 1999.
The Congress's motto, “In health, we are all indispensable,” highlighted the interest in focusing on health promotion understood in a comprehensive bio-psycho-social way and the commitment to broaden the view beyond the framework of health professionals.
This first congress also aimed to honor the memory of Dr. Emili Mira i Lopez. He was honored as a mental health professional who was competent from an integrative and community-sensitive perspective, and as a person who was deeply committed to democracy.
The preparation of the congress involved very intense collective work, following the methodology used in the preliminary sessions that had taken place in May 1997, to shape the content, putting into practice a choral, multidisciplinary, and community vision. A review of the congress's content makes this more evident:
– Three Panel Discussions: Elements for a Conceptualization of Mental Health. Determinism and Freedom. Vulnerability, a Heuristic Model of Mental Health/Illness.
– Five Symposia: Mental health in the new social context. Is our society promoting mental health for children and adolescents? Nursing care in community mental health. Promotion and prevention of mental health from a gender perspective. Vulnerability to mental disorders.
– Set up focus groups on mental health and the educational world, culture and community, family, society, healthcare networks, organizations, and professional training.
– Thirteen Workshops: Specific attention to Severe Mental Disorders from community services. Dual Pathology. Social needs of people with Severe Mental Disorders. Occupational stress. Group awareness workshop. Bioethics, consent, and competence. Teaching and SM. Place and madness; City and SM. Journalism in SM. SM as resource activation. Educational intervention in the penitentiary environment. Motivational interviewing in alcoholic patients. The ill doctor.
Cultural Activities
Film week at the Filmoteca de la Generalitat de Catalunya with films sensitive to health issues and subsequent debates on aspects related to MS.
Premi XARXART for artistic works, within the scope of visual arts, aimed at users with exhibitions of selected works.
Photographic exhibition on the history of psychiatry in Catalonia.
Four conferences:
Emili Mira i López: The Current Relevance of His Work. Enrique Lafuente
Is the mind-brain problem relevant to psychiatry and mental health? Francisco Mora
Ethics and Scientific Thought. Diego Garcia
Mental health at the threshold of the 21st century. Benedetto Saraceno
We were on the “threshold of the 21st century” and with the conviction that mental health was fundamental for achieving a global health level essential for developing a life with dignity, we had managed to present this project, a congress, as a space for open thought for all people interested in sharing an idea about mental health. We were also aware of the limitation of our specialized knowledge and that the promotion and care of mental health should be an action conceived and shared with the participation of everyone and not just mental health professionals. Perhaps the atmosphere at the beginning of the century made us feel a favorable force to sustain the ambition of undertaking a different project, or at least one open to being different, in the utopian pursuit of collective health in a healthy world.
Around a thousand participants were gathered, truly enriching the discussions, which also included contributions from individuals and families directly affected by mental health issues. There wasn't much practice in our environment for building this type of meeting space, and the enthusiasm shown at this first congress pushed us to continue with the project of becoming a Foundation. Thus, a year later, the Catalan Congress of Mental Health Foundation was established.
In November 2000, already as a Foundation, the 1st Conference was organized. “Hello Mind: visions and responsibilities from politics, culture, and health services” This led to a major debate on aspects of alienation and mental health progress. Other topics were discussed more precisely, such as: the types of knowledge useful for designing primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention strategies; how to reduce the individual, family, and social burden of mental disorders; the impact of social changes and family metamorphosis on health and the nature of the problems that mental health programs must address; or technological changes and the risks of globalization and economic interdependence on people's lives.