The Government delegate in Cantabria, Ainoa Quiñones, has claimed that “the Government of Spain has placed mental health at the epicentre of public policies”, providing this area with “more resources, especially for the care of young people and adolescents”.
Quiñones has pointed this out this Tuesday in the act for the Mental Health Day, which has been held in the Plaza del Ayuntamiento de Santander and in which the president of Cantabria, María José Sáenz de Buruaga, and the mayor of Santander, Gema Igualada, have also intervened.
The Government delegate stressed that the Government of Spain has promoted the Mental Health Action Plan 2022-2024 financed with more than 100 million euros and has also created new tools such as the implementation of this line 024, which has answered more than 158,000 calls and has identified and intervened in more than 8,500 cases of high or ongoing suicide risk.
On the other hand, it has highlighted the fact that a transfer of 38.5 million euros has also been approved to the autonomous communities to strengthen mental health care aimed at the early detection of pathologies and the fight against stigma and also to improve infrastructures related to community mental health.
“And also now, during the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the European Union, our country is leading the promotion of an approved strategy as an opportunity to lead a strategic reflection on the reinforcement that the EU must prioritize around mental health policies,” said Quiñones.
For the government delegate, “mental health must stop being a silenced disease, become part of the public debate and, above all, have more public resources. To move from silence to debate and debate to action to decisively contribute to halting the rise in mental illness that we have been seeing since the pandemic.”
Finally, the delegate of the Government considered that “facing the stigma and taboo associated with the disease is a challenge that must be shared with all public administrations and entities to seek solutions” and, for this, “we have to update all our tools to be able to respond from a transversal and public health approach to the present and future challenges, and in that we must all be together, united, but above all committed”.
Quiñones has participated in the event organized by ASCASAM, the Padre Menni Hospital Center, the Chord Foundation and Proyecto Hombre, in which a manifesto has been read and tents of the different entities have been installed to publicize the activity they perform.