Bertolè (Milan Municipality), ‘bringing mental distress back to Serie A’

2023-10-10 17:18:29

“The importance of the topic of mental health, especially in relation to the use of social networks, is fundamental. It is no coincidence that we organized the new edition of ‘Milan for mental health’, which includes one hundred initiatives around 10 October, World Mental Health Day, precisely to break the silence that surrounds psychological distress. We have also drawn up a Manifesto for mental health, called ‘Common Good’, because we must overcome the individual and private dimension of the issue of mental health and treat it as a collective fact, which concerns all of us”. “The healthcare system has a big deficit because mental health is always considered a second-class issue. With these initiatives we want to make it a second-class issue because there is no health without mental health”. Thus the Councilor for Welfare and Health of the Municipality of Milan, Lamberto Bertolè, on the sidelines of the event ‘Socialized Minds, youth mental health in the social media era’, organized by Janssen (Johnson & Johnson) and the University of Milan -Bicocca and with the patronage of the Municipality of Milan.

“We therefore want to combat the stigma, accompany the socialization of issues concerning mental health – he continues – and guide people towards more appropriate responses because today people don’t know who to turn to and often income is a very strong discriminator compared to quality and timeliness of routes”.

“If we then focus our attention on the youth world – continues the councilor – obviously we have an even more serious and serious problem. The pandemic has amplified some difficulties and today we have more fragile girls and boys. We have to give them answers. Furthermore, we know how social changes and those linked to digital and communication tools, including social media, can generate new dimensions and new spaces for relationships, but also new risks. This is why it is very important to work together and share experiences and strategies to begin to catch up on our country’s great delay in this sense. We are at the bottom of the list when it comes to mental health issues, with very long diagnosis times and difficult care even for the littlest ones.”