Organizer: Mental Illness Foundation of Catalonia.
Collaborating institution: Ramon Molinas Foundation.
Implementation schedule: 01/01/2013 – 31/12/2013.
A program to fight against a double social exclusion
Ramon Molinas Foundation participates in the program Individualized attention to the mentally ill in order to fight against social exclusion and poverty. The initiative, devised by the Mental Illness Foundation of Catalonia, intends to protect those people that suffer from serious mental disorders and that are at risk of social exclusion.
The program was born after the Mental Illness Foundation of Catalonia detected how year after year there was an increase in the number of their users who were in a delicate socioeconomic situation. This circumstance, currently in force, propitiates that the people affected suffer a series of deficiencies common to all their basic needs, such as feeding, housing, o hygiene. Besides, this makes them a collective with a double social exclusion: first because of their illness, and second because of their socioeconomic situation.
The main goal of the action is to promote the social integration of the program users by their insertion in the labor market. In order to materialize this, the Mental Illness Foundation of Catalonia has devised a set of actions that guarantees the coverage of their basic needs and their training. It is a long term project and it is supervised by social workers. On the other hand, it is a network intervention that mobilizes several factors, such as soup kitchens and adult schools, and that searches for synergies of employment counselling with the municipal councils.
The program is destined to the collective of people who suffer from serious mental disorders. The beneficiaries have some features in common: they have little autonomy, they are legally incapacitated, they are protected by the Mental Illness Foundation of Catalonia, and they earn as sole income some small contributory benefit.
The Mental Illness Foundation of Catalonia, an entity serving people who suffer from mental disorders
The Mental Illness Foundation of Catalonia has been in charge or protecting people who suffer from serious mental disorders since 1992. Currently, the entity looks after around 200 users. The finality of the Foundation is to improve the quality of life of the people who suffer from some kind of mental disease, defend their rights, and promote their autonomy. On the other hand, the organization provides counselling to the users’ relatives and it is a tool that serves to sensitize the society about the problems and needs of the people that suffer from mental illnesses.
The current socioeconomic situation, a grievance to the vulnerability of this collective
The socioeconomic context which our country is subjected to has worsened the situation of the people that suffer from mental disorders. The Mental Illness Foundation of Catalonia has detected year after year an increase in the number of people from this collective that are in a situation of poverty and with no possibility of receiving means from the mental health network.
Besides, studies carried out by the World Health Organization, the government of North America or the Spanish Society of Public Health and Health Administration (Sespas), agree on the detection of the increase of mental illnesses due to the economic uncertainty. This situation is aggrieved by the denunciation published by the Biomedical Research Center in Medical Health Network (Cibersam). The organization, dedicated to investigate mental disorders, revealed that Spain was one of the countries that spent less money in research on mental illnesses. The State coffers dedicate less than 5% of the budget on health research, whereas the European average is around 13%.
Links of interest:
Mental Illness Foundation of Catalonia website.