We are celebrating 20 years of the CCSM Foundation
These days mark the twentieth anniversary of the Catalan Congress of Mental Health Foundation and the Board of Trustees of this institution which, along with the valuable contributions of the Friends of the Foundation and the successive Boards of Directors, manage its programs and develop its activities.
This is a good opportunity to highlight its relevant activities, with various institutional actions aimed at promoting knowledge and stimulating the creation and development of multiple programs. In this way, the Foundation contributes to the necessary consolidation of Community Mental Health care in accordance with the fundamental principles of Public Health.
Throughout its history and from its inception, it has had the collaboration and support of the following professional colleges as protecting partners: the College of Physicians of Barcelona, the College of Nurses of Barcelona, the College of Psychology of Catalonia, the College of Social Educators of Catalonia, and the College of Social Work of Catalonia. The Foundation also receives support from the Barcelona City Council and the Generalitat of Catalonia. With this extensive structure, the FCCSM has been developing numerous activities in the field of community mental health prevention, promotion, and care since its beginnings.
Teaching and research are fundamental parts of the Foundation. They are developed within various working groups, conferences, and numerous congresses that promote the participation of professionals from different disciplines and professional and community associations.
In times like these, when a global pandemic has reminded us of the importance of defending public health, it is important to renew our firm commitment. The COVID-19 crisis has added new challenges for health systems and for all professionals. Not only because the disease itself has added psychological suffering to both those who contracted the virus and those who did not, but also because it has made multiple fractures and shortcomings of our model of coexistence visible, which must be corrected as soon as possible. These fissures have followed others that already existed, those marked by social injustices, by the dramas of migration, by the unequal ability to access the services that ensure many basic rights. Now is the time for action: we must turn suffering into dissent; pain into a commitment to mutual solidarity. Many of the values that have guided us in recent decades are once again anything but rhetorical. Fraternity emerges as an essential ethical principle. The entire citizenry has recognized the dedication and courage of healthcare professionals: now more than ever, the values that have guided the FCCSM are a point of reference and a source of inspiration.
Given its twenty-year history, I am very pleased to congratulate all those who, with their valuable contributions from such diverse interdisciplinary activities, have built this solid institutional trajectory. Likewise, I want to reiterate my wishes that the FCCSM continues to collaborate in the construction of a qualified and equitable universal health system, based on the fundamental principles of Public Health.
Valentin Barenblit.
Psychiatrist - Psychoanalyst.
FCCSM Patron.