Today, Thursday 13th January is World Day for the Fight against Depression.
The Health Service of the Balearic Islands will incorporate the clinical psychologist into the portfolio of primary care services. This figure will be incorporated over the coming months.

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The Balearic Islands will thus join Madrid, Asturias and Catalonia, the only communities that already have clinical psychologists in primary care. According to Oriol Lafau, head of the Mental Health Office of the Balearic Islands, this is a “substantial change in the care provided to people suffering from minor mental health disorders”. The clinical psychologist will work alongside primary care professionals to attend to these people from the health centre. Therapeutic group work and counselling will be the main tools of these professionals who, through regulated and agreed therapeutic interventions, will attend to the population dependent on the health centre. In this way, only those people suffering from more serious disorders will be referred to specific mental health services.

The pandemic has inflicted a very high level of emotional suffering on the population. In this sense, in the Balearic Islands, consultations related to anxiety and mild depressive disorders in primary care have increased by 16 percent during the pandemic.

“If one thing has been highlighted in these two years, it is the need to take care of our mental health,” says Lafau, who recalls that the Parliament of the Balearic Islands has named 2022 the Year of Emotional Well-being.

“From the Mental Health Office we are sure that, with the incorporation of clinical psychologists in primary care, the direct management of the waiting list or the recruitment of a greater number of professionals, it will be possible to attend more effectively to the large number of people who are suffering the consequences of the pandemic on their emotional wellbeing,” concludes Lafau.