SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Oct. 10 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The president of the Canary Islands Mental Health Federation, Cristina Acosta, warned this Tuesday of the “helplessness” suffered by people with mental health problems because “every day” their rights are violated.
For this reason, at the inauguration of a day in the Parliament of the Canary Islands on the occasion of ‘World Mental Health Day’, he extended his hand to the parliamentary groups to approve an autonomous law, following the example of La Rioja, to “protect and improve” rights.
Acosta has insisted that the violation of rights is “systematic and structural” since people suffer from isolation, forced medication or mechanical and chemical restraints that end in situations of “abuse”, to the point that some organizations describe it as “forms of torture”.
He has also warned that they face “social and labor obstacles” because they suffer many “prejudices, discrimination and stigma”, in such a way that it is difficult for them to have “full access” to their citizenship status.
He has also regretted the “double discrimination” of women and the LGTBI community that condemns them to “more poverty, loneliness and Singoharism.”
The federation insists on “putting people at the center”, emphasizing that “there is still a way to go” and that we are experiencing a “historic moment” after the pandemic, which marked “a before and after” in the outlook on these pathologies. “No person is safe from having their life shaken,” he added.
The president of the Parliament of the Canary Islands, Astrid Pérez, has defended the Chamber’s “commitment” to mental health because “it is everyone’s problem that affects the entire society”, since mental illness “has as many faces as there are people, “It has no age, no sex, no social status, it is not something that is chosen.”
He has cited Unicef reports that show that 20% of adolescents have mental problems in Spain or 15% have serious symptoms, such as depression, and in the specific case of the Canary Islands, each year 67,000 people are treated in health services and one out of every four people is at risk of mental disorder.
Along these lines, he has pointed out that “taking care of health is everyone’s job” and “from childhood to old age” since “no one is exempt from suffering from mental health problems”, hence it should be treated as “a universal right.” .
Pérez highlighted “the tireless work” of the families of the affected people and the associations that ensure the rights of this group” such as AFES, El Cribo, ATELSAM, AFESUR, Salud Mental La Palma, ASOMASAMEN or TLP Impulso, which organized this act.
