The Government Delegation in the Canary Islands, held today at its headquarters in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria the panel discussion Gender violence as a key factor in mental health, in which experts and experts from the fields of health, the Public Administration, Security Forces and Bodies, trade unions and women's associations have analysed the involvement of male violence in women's mental health.
The Subdelegate of the Government in Las Palmas, Teresa Mayans, moderated the panel discussion that was held in the Throne Room in the Delegation of the Government, in which speakers were Silvia Luján, psychologist of the Primary Care Service of the Canary Health Service (SCS); Ana Sofía Fernández, head of the Forensic Clinic Service of the Institute of Legal Medicine of Las Palmas, and Alberto García, head of the Unit of Coordination against Violence against Women of the Canary Islands Government Delegation.
The debate has served to highlight how, according to a report from the Ministry of Health of 2021 with data from clinical records of primary care, the Canary Islands is the second autonomous community with the most mental health problems in Spain, being predominantly female in adulthood.
“There is a clear female predominance in the use of psychoactive drugs, which doubles and sometimes triples the consumption of men. In addition, consumption soars as income decreases,” said Teresa Mayans.
“Gender violence is present in the biographical narrative when emotional distress is contextualized, such as with child abuse, physical and/or psychological abuse, sexual harassment, lack of job recognition or glass ceiling. The main approach is the medicalization of emotional distress. The high consumption of psychoactive drugs in the female population is due to a strategy of coping with the diffuse discomforts (somatizations) that women manifest in the medical consultation, many of them derived from adverse living conditions,” he added.
The Subdelegate of the Government in Las Palmas, a psychiatrist by profession and who was part of the medical team that carried out the reform of psychiatric care in the Canary Islands, has expressed the need to use the gender approach as a methodological and work tool applied to the field of mental health.