From 21 to 23 September Adeje will host the first "Horizons" congress organised by the Canary Association of Neuropsychiatry and Mental health (ACN). Details were confirmed by the president of ACN, Eduardo Vera Barrios, and Adeje mayor José Miguel Rodríguez Fraga, at a meeting held a few days ago. Those interested in attending can register at the following link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdjOyocsj1lUMdHkuwYmKCfCyflTF29-q3P8Jy_-Mc5Znq8KA/viewform
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdjOyocsj1lUMdHkuwYmKCfCyflTF29-q3P8Jy_-Mc5Znq8KA/viewform
The aim of the congress is to create a meeting point for staff with specialised healthcare training in the Canary Islands. During the conference, topics of current and future interest in mental health will be addressed, and the programme includes speakers from various mental health disciplines. The event will cover current issues such as dual pathology, the relationship between gender and mental health, bringing the user closer to the community, human rights in mental health and the neuroscience of emotions.
For the mayor of Adeje, this "is a milestone in the "Mentalízate" programme that we launched two years ago and in which we wanted to focus on the need to care for the mental health of the population after the pandemic. This programme has been highly valued and has allowed us to detect a fundamental need for the well-being of the population. Mental health has ceased to be a taboo full of stereotypes and has become part of public agendas".
As Eduardo Vera explained, "we are calling the congress "Horizons in mental health", as opposed to ‘Limits’. I believe that today new perspectives are opening up to face each of the existing challenges in mental health, and we need to expand our knowledge to face them". He added that "this congress does not only want to be didactic, but also wants to be a space for reflection, where all experts in psychology, psychiatry, specialised care, education, technical and political staff of administrations, etc. can look for common strategies to strengthen and improve the mental health of the population".
This congress will have various interesting themes, including Community Psychiatry, Relationship between Mental health and Gender, Dual Pathology, Eating Disorder, Human Rights in Mental health, Neuroscience, Prevention in Mental health, and Personal experiences of what it means to be a mental health professional.
Two of the sessions will be open to the general public. One will be a talk by Ignacio Jovtis, a lawyer specialising in Human Rights from the George Clooney Foundation, with Eduardo Vera, on mental health in the war in Ukraine, a place he has visited a number of times this year to study war crimes. The other talk will be by Jesús Martín-Fernández, a prestigious neurosurgeon, a specialist in ‘awake surgery’, will talk about how it is possible to interrogate the circuits of the limbic or emotional system intra-operatively to avoid damaging critical points in tumour surgery.
In addition, books on psychopathology and psychology and psychiatry published in recent years by authors such as Luis Enrique Vidal Palmer, José García-Valdecasas Campelo, María Rosario Cejas, David Trujillo and María Teresa Miró will be on sale.
Various administrative representatives are invited to the event, such as the recently appointed councillor of Health, Esther Monzón and the director of the General Directorate of Mental health and Addictions, Fernando Gómez-Pamo.
That this congress is being held in Adeje is a demonstration of the council’s commitment to mental health, in addition to other projects such as the Emotional Education for Citizenship workshops, and the talks on how to "Look after your mind" developed for teenagers through the borough’s secondary schools. These projects were part of the Adeje council's mental health Programme "Mentalízate", of which doctor Eduardo Vera took an active part.
Sponsors of the event are the Adeje Town Hall, La Laguna Town Hall, the University of La Laguna, the Canarian Association of Creative Therapies, Grupo Fedola, the Spanish Association of Neuropsychiatry-Mental health Professionals and the Institutional Chair of Healthy Organisations, Well-being and Social Innovation of the ULL.
Information and links to registration here:
All talks and discussions will be in Spanish
