MENTAL HEALTH SPAIN celebrates 40 years of fighting for the rights of people with mental health problems
To commemorate this anniversary, the Confederation has produced a video that values the history of the associative movement and its contribution to the progress of mental health, and that it will disseminate under the hashtag #40AñosSaludMental.
Under the motto “40 years for mental health, for rights, for you”, As of today, and throughout 2023, the Confederation of MENTAL HEALTH SPAIN celebrates the 40th anniversary of its constitution. It does so by claiming the need to defend the rights of people with mental health problems and increase resources so that the public health system can offer them adequate care, based at the community level.
To commemorate these four decades, the Confederation aims to value the history of the associative movement and its contribution to the progress of mental health, as well as focusing on the generational relief of the people who will lead the associative movement in the future.
Nel Gonzalez Zapico, president of SALUD MENTAL ESPAÑA, assures that “Significant progress has been made in recent years, but we are still far from getting people’s mental health addressed the way it should”. For González Zapico, “These 40 years have been full of effort, determination and enthusiasm. We did not lose hope then nor will we lose it now. We are going to continue working as an associative movement to improve the lives of people with mental health problems and their environment. Progress in recent decades is evident, but much remains to be done”.
To reflect this idea of evolution, SALUD MENTAL ESPAÑA has produced a video, which is now available on the Confederation’s YouTube channel and on all its social networks, in which a brief overview of the progress of recent decades in mental health and in the associative movement, through the testimonies of several people linked to it.
Elena Briongosa member of the Board of Directors of SALUD MENTAL ESPAÑA, explains in the video the situation experienced by people with mental health problems 40 years ago: “We felt very alone, isolated and abandoned. They mistreated us, they locked us up in asylums and we had no rights”.
For his part, Nel González reports that “families did not know what to do or where to go. Although there were some associations, no one listened to us. we had no strength”. Precisely from this loneliness the state union of the associative movement was born in the figure of SALUD MENTAL ESPAÑA. “For me it was to see the light“, recognize Mª Ángeles Arbaizagoitiavice president of the Confederation, “because I found associations and people in my situation”.
For people with mental health problems it was also a step forward. “For the first time, I felt safe, supported and accompanied”, states Elena Iglesias, Member of the State Network of Women for MENTAL HEALTH SPAIN. “By uniting, we began to gain visibility and integrate into social and political life. It was not an easy road”, he points out in the video Montserrat Vázquezmember of the Management Committee of SALUD MENTAL ESPAÑA.
“We fight so that we are not labeled. To finally have a dignified, independent life with recognized rights”, assures Jonathan Yuste, member of the Committee for Mental Health in the First Person of SALUD MENTAL ESPAÑA. For his part, Irene Muñoz Scandelllegal adviser to the Confederation, highlights in the video that the associative movement represents “advance in rights (education, employment, equality…) and do it with a gender perspective”.
mental health claims
In these 40 years, there have been undeniable advances in mental health care. However, the public social and health resources dedicated to this sector are still clearly insufficient, with the consequent impact on the quality of life of people with mental health problems and their environment.
“The main objective of the Confederation for the coming years is to work to stop violating the human rights of people with mental health problems”, indicates Nel González.
“This includes numerous areas of action: from involuntary admissions and mechanical restraints, which should tend to zero, to the discrimination suffered by people with mental disorders in the labor, social or administrative spheres”.
In this sense, at the end of 2022, the Confederation launched the State Observatory for Mental Health, Rights and Equality, a space for denunciation, reflection, information and defense of human rights.
He empowerment of people with mental health problems and the fight against stigma and discrimination These are other priority objectives that the Confederation will continue to work on in the coming years. In addition, it is essential to address areas such as employment, facilitating the labor insertion of people with mental health problems and sensitizing the business fabric to encourage their hiring in ordinary companies. The Confederation also claims to focus on the education (and, therefore, in prevention), promoting mental health and early detection of mental disorders in schools and institutes, through quality inclusive education. Likewise, it is urgent to work on the suicide prevention, since more than 4,000 people in Spain take their own lives every year. It is also essential to pay attention to the most vulnerable groups (LGBTIQ+ people, homeless people, migrants, refugees or asylum seekers, the elderly, etc.) and to the child and adolescent population, all with a gender perspective.
These demands are made in a context in which the mental health of the population is increasingly precarious: In Spain, four out of ten people assess their mental health negatively, according to the study “The situation of mental health in Spain”, prepared by the Confederation of MENTAL HEALTH SPAIN and the Fundación Mutua Madrileña. According to the report, 14.5% of the population has had suicidal ideas or has attempted suicide. Among the people diagnosed with a mental health problem, more than half (58.5%) have felt social rejection for it at some point in their lives by their environment. The report also reflects that 18.9% of the population over the age of 18 consume psychotropic drugs and 73% of them do so daily. Hence the importance of mental health being a priority on Spain’s social and political agenda.
New visual identity and ONCE coupon
To represent these 40 years, SALUD MENTAL ESPAÑA has created, by the hand of the designer Julio Marta, a symbol that is born from an interpretation of the original logo, and whose intention is that it is related to the Confederation but that, at the same time, has entity own. Conceptually, two of the faces look at each other and smile. It inherits colors and the original shape of the tree with its associated positive elements, stability, growth, but graphically modernized, simplified and more regular. The smiles outline a 40, in relation to the anniversary.
As a complementary visual identity, the Confederation has chosen the figure of a lighthouse to represent the associative movement as a guide that illuminates the path that remains to be traveled in the field of mental health.
Lastly, ONCE commemorates today the anniversary of SALUD MENTAL ESPAÑA with a coupon dedicated to 40 years of the Confederacy, under the motto “40 years for mental health, for rights, for you”. Like the rest of the ONCE coupons, those of this edition can be purchased through the network of more than 19,000 vendors of the entity, as well as through www.juegosonce.es, and authorized collaborating establishments.