Welcome to World Mental Health Day, in a year where the Spanish Mental Health Confederation turns 40, for rights, for you.
On this day, we want to show that mental health is a right inherent to the human condition, and that its enjoyment does not include barriers or borders.
A society with rights is an evolved society.
However, what could be a natural evolution towards well-being becomes a process of dehumanization due to armed conflicts, structural poverty and lack of opportunities.
It is up to all of us to remember that the right to mental health is the expression of a socially accepted will, but that it will only be effective if public powers provide the necessary resources. In other words: the lack of investment in mental health favors the violation of rights.
In principle, the right to mental health has two different readings:
On the one hand, the right to well-being and participation in a society that respects mental health; that offers trust instead of discrimination, understanding instead of exclusion, and peace instead of misery.
On the other hand, and today that a mental health problem has been experienced, the right to a universal rehabilitative model, which delves into people’s potential and their social projection, in such a way that disappointment becomes hope.
Given this, we have to be vigilant, because the formulation and acceptance of our rights is not enough: we seek their realization. And for this, the only possible sign is the continuous struggle and the visibility of our aspiration: an emancipatory life project.
Our hands are tired of waiting.
The universality and conquest of rights can begin from the closest bond, from the way of understanding human relationships; to the neighborhood, the town, the city, and finally, the nations.
At this point, mental health will stop being a gesture and become a behavior, a State Policy.
Thus, hand in hand with the UN Convention on the rights of people with disabilities, we ask the State:
- Work to raise awareness and understanding of the problems associated with mental health. Stigma continues to make it difficult to practice our rights.
- Seek a livable future for boys and girls, so that they develop in an environment of emotional well-being.
- Guarantee the freedom and safety of people, as well as their protection from degrading treatment. We are entering a new time for mental health, and coercive measures must give way to recovery spaces compatible with human dignity.
Furthermore, our claims for the right to life continue to be fully relevant, and we are committed to carrying out awareness-raising and suicide prevention campaigns in schools, universities and in the workplace. It is about opening channels of communication and trust, since by sharing feelings new ways of seeing life will be born.
Mental health care must have a global approach, where all people are participants, or else much of the energy invested will be lost.
In the end, everything that is done in favor of the right to mental health will have a real return, since a society with mental health is a society with well-being, and in a society with well-being the human being reaches its meaning.
Mental Health, World Health. A Universal Right.
Thanks for listening to us.
First Person Mental Health Committee of MENTAL HEALTH SPAIN and State Network of Women of MENTAL HEALTH SPAIN
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