The FCCSM structures its activity through its Working Groups, made up of professionals, people with lived experience, family members and other stakeholders in the field of mental health
Thinkers Group
A participatory democracy experience
Who are we?
The Thinkers Group is an initiative of the Catalan Mental Health Congress Foundation created in 2010 as a space for reflection, dialogue, and citizen participation. It brings together people with lived experience in mental health, family members, professionals, and interested citizens to share perspectives and build knowledge collectively, within an open, egalitarian environment independent of the care setting.
The group is based on the conviction that mental health is a shared responsibility and that collective thinking is a fundamental tool for understanding social challenges, promoting participation, and contributing to the improvement of care models and public policies.
Objectives?
- Promote citizen participation and shared thinking on the main mental health challenges.
- To foster dialogue between people with lived experience, family members, professionals, and the citizenry from a community and interdisciplinary perspective.
- Generate reflection and proposals that contribute to the defense of rights, social inclusion, and the improvement of practices and policies in mental health.
What do we do?
Each edition of the Thinkers Group takes place over the course of nine monthly sessions conducted through a participatory methodology that facilitates listening, debate, and the collective construction of knowledge. Over the years, issues such as identity, family, recovery, loneliness, responsibility, the meaning of life, the consequences of the pandemic, and the effects of armed conflicts on mental health have been addressed.
In addition to the working sessions, the group promotes meetings, publications, and outreach activities that contribute to enriching the social debate and giving visibility to citizen participation as an essential element in the promotion of mental health.
Who is a part of it?
The group is open to people with lived experience, family members, professionals, and citizens interested in participating in a space for reflection and collective construction around mental health.
Coordination team Àngels Vives and Montserrat Martinez
More information: info@fccsm.net
With the support:
Thinkers Group
A participatory democracy experience
Childhood and Youth
Promote the mental health of children, adolescents and young people
Who are we?
The Children and Youth Group of the Catalan Congress of Mental Health Foundation is made up of professionals from various disciplines who carry out their activity in the field of early childhood, childhood, adolescence, and youth. Its members participate in this space on a personal basis, contributing their experience and knowledge from different care, educational, social, and community fields.
The group works to promote a comprehensive, interdisciplinary, and community-based approach to mental health, fostering the exchange of knowledge and the construction of shared proposals.
Objectives?
- Promote reflection and debate on the main mental health challenges facing children, adolescents, and youth.
- To promote coordination and joint work with other FCCSM groups and initiatives to generate a cross-cutting perspective.
- Contribute to the development of the Foundation's proposals and positions in the field of child and adolescent mental health.
What do we do?
The group promotes spaces for reflection and debate among professionals, participates in conferences, forums, and initiatives of the Foundation, and fosters training activities on current topics related to child and adolescent mental health. Likewise, it collaborates with other working groups of the FCCSM to encourage a more coordinated response to the new challenges affecting children, adolescents, young people, and their families.
Who is a part of it?
Professionals from different disciplines related to mental health, education, social services, and other fields related to childhood, adolescence, and youth.
Members: Paloma Azpilicueta, Ester Boixadera, Marcel Cortada, Neri Daurella, M. José Fernández de Sanmamed, Myriam García, Carmen Grifoll, Soledad Bermann Jachevasky, Antònia Llairo, Teresa Morandi, Francisco Nuñez, Marta Pérez Campdepadrós, Marta Prat de la Riba, Clara Pujol, Javier Ramos, Anna Robert, Esther Rodríguez, Raúl Salmerón and Benedetta Zecchi.
Coordination team Myriam García, Anna Robert, Ester Boixadera, and Teresa Morandi
More information: info@fccsm.net
With the support:
Childhood and Youth
Promote the mental health of children, adolescents and young people
Families in Action for Mental Health
Families: a voice in mental health
Who are we?
Family group, created in 2022, with the aim of meeting to share experiences with our children, who have been diagnosed at some point with a mental health-related diagnosis. Some situations are more serious and chronic, others perhaps milder and slowly recovering. Our discussion initially focuses on sharing how we have lived through this process, how we feel about the treatment offered to our children, and how we have felt treated as families by the healthcare service system we have had to access, always with the intention of generating alternative (or improvable) proposals to the model of care and treatment for patients' families.
The group meets regularly on the second Monday of each month. The meetings also serve to mark new milestones that allow the group to consolidate progressively.
The group's intention is not to create a therapeutic or mutual help group, but rather to bring together families who have lived or are living with the reality of having a daughter or son, or a close relative, affected by a mental health issue. These are families who, at some point, received a diagnosis and didn't know what to do with the news. They include families with minor children, families with young adults or adult children (and thus already excluded from the care system), and diverse families who shared the bewilderment of being individually and alone within a system thatAssigns blame and excludes. Progressively, care professionals have also joined the group to facilitate discussion and broaden knowledge and understanding of the current model.
What are our goals?
- Sharing experiences that have left a mark on us
- Generate alternative/improvable proposals to the relational model with families from mental health/addictions.
- Generate debate among group members and with mental health professionals
- Build an opinion group
- Visualize ourselves and escape the stigma
Who is part of the group?
Family members of people (early adolescence) diagnosed with, or not, a mental health disorder (chronic or episodic) and/or addiction.
Coordinator Montserrat Rovira
If you want more information, contact us at: info@fccm.net
With the support:
Families in Action for Mental Health
Families: a voice in mental health
Creativity, Culture, and Mental Health
Transformative arts and culture
Who are we?
Newly formed group to drive and energize various initiatives around creativity, artistic production, and mental health. The project aims to highlight artistic creation processes as a means of raising awareness for the improvement of recovery, socialization, and community inclusion pathways for individuals experiencing emotional distress.
Art contributes to psychological well-being and also provides elements of community well-being and health. Individually, it contributes by providing a task, helping to develop skills and recognize identities, allowing connection with oneself, and connection with others. The development of expressive arts allows for communication and expression beyond what words can convey, and generates spaces for collective construction through the sharing of perspectives, fostering debates and dialogues around each work and the creative process itself.
Making the creative process visible and giving voice to the authors of the works helps build healthier neighborhoods, contributing to the community's well-being. Art also brings well-being to our communities and offers them a tool for expressing their desires and also their discomforts.
Through art, men and women who use the mental health network have an opportunity to become visible, actively participate in the community, contribute to the community, and avoid exclusion.
What are our goals?
- Promote and make visible the transformative capacity of creative processes in the recovery of people suffering from emotional distress and discomfort.
- Promote spaces for debate and awareness in the community context on mental health and artistic creation.
- Promote the diffusion and distribution of artistic production in its various formats and expressions: painting/drawing, poetry and narrative, photography, music, theater, among others.
Who is part of the group?
Ada Ruiz, Anna Carrió, David Clusa, Francesc de Diego, Montse Martinez, Josep Duran «Urco».
Coordination team Anna Carrió, Montse Martínez, David Clusa and Jose Fernandez
If you want more information, contact us at: info@fccsm.net
With the support:
Creativity, Culture, and Mental Health
Transformative arts and culture
Digital Society and Mental Health Observatory
Digitalization Impact Analysis Space
Who are we?
Newly formed group aims to maintain the interest generated by the 2021 congress. “Digital Society and Mental Health” on the influence of digital transformation in society on mental health and continuing to foster debate around its various facets, ethical, psychosocial, psychopathological, and therapeutic.
The end of the pandemic makes it necessary to reflect on the sustained effects that are being observed and the psychosocial changes that will remain, including in the use and misuse of digitalization.
Many self-harm behaviors, including eating disorders, have increased, and social media plays a significant role in this. The hyper-demand and isolation during the pandemic seem to have played a relevant part.
With the closest date, there is the organization of a post-conference day, which will take place next December 16 to CoMB, more information (this will link to the day's information on the website)
Our purpose is to gather relevant publications and information on the evolution of this topic.
What are our goals?
- Promote an interdisciplinary observatory on the evolution of digitalization processes and their impact on the mental health of the population and care models.
- Analyze the development of care models through technologies
- Understanding the problems that arise or grow through technologies
- Ensure equal opportunities without differentiating by ethnicity, gender, or age.
- Maintain a critical attitude towards digital models that do not respect diversity. Ensure ethical practices.
- Promote spaces for debate and awareness regarding the influence of digitalization in its various aspects (ethical, psychosocial, psychopathological, and therapeutic) on society, and more specifically, on mental health.
- Track scientific production in the field.
Who is part of the group?
Amparo del Pino, Albert Mariné, Jose Fernandez, Anna Robert, Eduardo Valenciano, Anna Palau
Coordination team Albert Mariné, Anna Palau and Amparo del Pino
If you want more information, contact us at: info@fccsm.net
With the support:
Digital Society and Mental Health Observatory
Digitalization Impact Analysis Space
Urbanism, housing, and mental health
Promote environments for mental health
Who are we?
We are a newly formed group made up of professionals from the fields of mental health and architecture, interested in everything related to the relationship between living spaces and people's mental health, as well as between the urban environment and people themselves.
What are our goals?
- Open an interdisciplinary workspace among the involved fields.
- Sharing knowledge to develop proposals and recommendations for the administration and other bodies in the sector
What do we do?
We have launched a multidisciplinary seminar/working group to address the topic and share insights and proposals with politicians and managers, as well as to welcome professional associations and organizations committed to the well-being of individuals, both individually and collectively.
Some of the topics we are concerned about and plan to address are:
- Urbanism and public space. The influence of the environment on mental health.
- Access to housing: young people and other vulnerable groups.
- Public spaces in the institutional sphere: healthcare, social services, education, others.
Who is part of the group?
Josep Vilajoana, Àngels Vives, Albert Mariné, Carles Garcia Ribera, Teresa Aragonès, Benedetta Rodeghiero, Jordi Marfà Vives, Rosa Lopez, Adrià Vilajoana, Cristina Maragall, Itziar Gonzalez, Enric Pol, Carmen Moratinos, Oscar Cano, Alicia Casals, Patricia Maestre, Marta Fité, Montserrat Rovira, Jordi Formiguera, Ania Bech, Sandra Bestraten, and Sonia Hernández.
Coordination team Josep Vilajoana and Àngels Vives
If you want more information, contact us at: info@fccsm.net
With the support:
Urbanism, housing, and mental health
Promote environments for mental health
History of Working Groups
The FCCSM has promoted various working groups that have generated knowledge, fostered debate, and promoted initiatives in mental health. Some had a time-limited activity, fulfilled their intended objectives, and left a relevant contribution to the Foundation's trajectory.
Working Group for Exchange and Development - WGED
Who are we?
GIE are the initials of“Exchange and Production Group”.
This group has been created by the Catalan Mental Health Congress Foundation to think about and process the catastrophic social situation we are experiencing, from a multidisciplinary perspective.
In addition to the personal and social discomfort that led us to create the GIE, another driving force has been the realization that we lack the theoretical and experiential tools for exercising what we call Participatory Democracy.
What do we do?
The GIE is a meeting and exchange space to generate social action. Those invited are people of different generations, professions, and trades who need to talk and think together about situations of individual and collective discomfort, generated in the current social context, in order to find collective and community-based, realistic, and sustainable responses.
The first experience was the creation of a group with over seventy participants, and a continuous working core of about twenty-five. The experience is organized around the spontaneous communication of the participants, which is then collected using a work method: a set number of sessions and a predetermined schedule, collection of minutes from working sessions and other organizers of communication and thought.
The first part of the experience consisted of 10 two-hour work sessions at the plenary level.
At the fifth meeting, while discussing the constituent process, a participant said:
«The possibility of creating our own state is being discussed, something new is being discussed: A NEW COUNTRY!! Perhaps we could propose a country that works well. Don't we have journalists, economists, psychologists, artists, etc.? Then let's propose a new country that we would like, with some basic principles. Let's think about it, because this is something we can all do...
Who wants to create a new country???”
From this, the creation of a subgroup for the creation of a Decalogue for a new country.This experience was presented at the Fifth Catalan Congress of Mental Health in June 2013.
The second part consists of launching three two-year work projects.
1- Decalogue for the construction of a new country.
2- Creation of new GIEs.
3- GIE Experience with Secondary School Students.
The three experiences are in the gestation period and open to participation by interested persons.Last year we went through the decalogue and are now working on the second round and concretization for the development of a document that captures the process of thought and imagination of a new country. The process of dreaming a country. The country we would like to live in.
With the violence we are exposed to every day, we think that this process of training in participatory democracy takes care of us and helps our mental health.
How can I participate?
You can attend all sessions or only one, either to participate actively or to listen. The meetings are held once a month and last for two hours. Each month, a topic from the decalogue is discussed: information is expanded, rethought, rewritten, etc.
Who is part of the group?
Initial promoter group (5th CCSM)
Lara Díez, Teresa Galligó, Jordi Marfà Vallverdú, Jordi Marfà Vives, Benedetta Rodhegiero, and Àngels Vives
Actual Promoter Group:
Lara Díez, Teresa Galligó, Shelly Andrade, Núria Mata, Leandro Carmona, Lucía Serra, Tessi Morandi, Mercedes Delgado and Àngels Vives.
Members (who have participated or are participating)
Albert Escala, Alicia Capdevila, Alicia Golijov, Alvaro Armendáriz, Àngels Vives, Ania Bech, Anna Miñarro, Anna Saperas, Arantxa García, Assun Reyes, Benedetta Rodeghiero, Bernat Llaberia, Carmen Marfà, Carmina Puig, Cristina Bigas, Dani Ulloa, David Clusa, Diego Quiroga, Edgar Vinyals, Eileen Wieland, Elena Carcelen, Elena Maggi, Emma Silvan, Ernest Planes, Gerard Fisa, Hafsa Chbani, Hector Grimberg, Irina Salzberg, Isabel Hernández, Juan José Tolosa, Joan Baptista, Jordi Marfà Vallverdú, Jordi Marfà Vives, Jordi Plana, Josep M. Armengou, Júlia Arnó, Júlia Salvador, Julieta Grimberg, Lara Díez, Lavínia Vila, Leandro Carmona, Lourdes Castell, Lucía Estrella Serra, Ma Àngels Piera, Magali Serra, Magda Puig, Maria Luz Abad, Mercedes Delgado, Mery Schwartz, Monserrat Puiggrós, Montserrat Rigol, Nadia Tolda, Noa Corredoira, Norma Ros, Núria Mata, Nuria Mestre, Olga Fernández, Paty Blumhofer, Pau Nadal, Pilar Sullá, Ramon Bonvehí, Remei Tarragó, Ricardo Montoya, Rosa Chico, Roser Cambray, Sandra Pinyol, Santiago Eizaguirre, Santiago Latorre, Shelly Andrade, Tania López, Teresa Codina, Teresa Galligó, Teresa Morandi, Teresa Morros, Teresa Rossell, Vanessa Serrano and Xavier Plana.
If you want more information or to participate in the group, contact us at: info@fccsm.net
Interview conducted with the Exchange and Development Group
Lara Diez (GIE spokesperson):
«We want everyone to dare to imagine and express what the country they want to live in is like.»
We invite you to read the’ full interview
Working Group Referrals
1.- Decalogue - Lara Díez, Josep Ma. Armengou
2. We GIEs – Mercedes Delgado, Nuria Mata
3.- Education – Shelly Andrade, Leandro Carmona
Working Group for Exchange and Development - WGED
Space for collective action
Working group on radicalization processes
Who are we?
This group is being established on the initiative of the Catalan Foundation for Mental Health Congress. For some time now, the FCCSM has been considering the possibility of creating a working group around these phenomena, especially following the attacks in Barcelona in August 2017.
Interdisciplinary discussion and reflection group, made up of professionals from health, mental health, community health, justice, education, and others. This is a working group based on the professional experience of its participants with phenomena directly or indirectly linked to radicalization, and whose work in each meeting will focus on a thematic axis. One of the group's objectives will be to develop thinking and tools to help confront increasingly frequent conflicts and problems (of violence?) in our society and in different areas.
In this first stage, several thematic axes are proposed around which to organize the working group's monthly meetings.
The idea is to work throughout this year and promote a conference at the end to present reflections, suggestions, and possible future proposals.
What are our goals?
- Creation of a space for reflection and participation from all areas to enable thinking about a phenomenon that is difficult to think about and in the face of which we can quickly seek protocols to help contain anxiety.
- To better understand the phenomenon through the professional experience of the group members, which, while perhaps not directly related to radicalization phenomena, can offer reflections and thoughts from their experience that can foster greater understanding.
- Develop a task that can help raise awareness among professionals, entities, NGOs, associations, etc., about the importance of emotional support in the face of this phenomenon in order to create a strong social network.
Interview conducted with the Working Group «Radicalization Processes»
«While we don't aim to eradicate radicalization, we can imagine ways to contain it by working in networks and helping professionals and families.»
We invite you to read the’full interview
...
Who is part of the group?
Members:
Eduardo Bada, Rosa Bada, Juan Carlos Barroso, Najat Driouech, Josep Oriol Esteve, Rachid El Younoussi, Ana Hernández, Solange Hilbert, Zyab Ibáñez, Josep Mª Lahosa, Francisco Martín, Abdou Mawa, Hajar Menssouri, Teresa Morandi, Miguel Perlado, Núria Riera, Miguel Angel Tapies, Jorge Tió, Juanjo Vernet,
If you want more information, contact us at: info@fccsm.net
With the support:
Working group on radicalization processes
Interdisciplinary reflection
Community Mental Health Working Group
Who are we?
We are a newly formed group whose objectives are reflection, analysis, and debate on Community Mental Health (CMH).
What are our goals?
- Provide a space for analysis and reflection based on the presentation of experiences and group discussion.
- Develop best practice recommendations: provide elements for improving the model.
- Contribute to the creation of a “cross-cutting” network, not just within the SM field
- Develop training and open debate proposals.
- To be an instance of support and promotion for research.
- To be a lobby group for model improvement.
What do we do?
We update, redefine, and defend the model proposed by the SMC, advise and support community work initiatives, as well as research projects in this field, and promote the teaching of the “community” model in various sectors and disciplines.
Who is part of the group?
Anna Carrió, Myriam Garcia, Albert Mariné, Lluis Albaigès, Ignasi Bros, Susana Alcala, José Leal, Teresa Aragonés, Daniel Garcia-Tarafa, Estefania Cuello, Margarida Cleris, Oriol Imbernon, Rosa Almiñana, Miriam Ruiz, Julia Sánchez, Belén Parra, Montserrat Balcells, Gemma Gómez, Carme Bono, Elena Flores, Javier Valenzuela, Miquel Juncosa, and Víctor Martí
If you want more information or to participate in the group, contact us at: info@fccsm.net
With the support:
Community Mental Health Working Group
Reflection, analysis and debate
SEPAC Working Group
Description
This group responds to the need to promote the healthy capabilities of people emotionally affected by the crisis, who not only suffer from job, housing, or dignity losses, but are also victims of medicalization (in the sense of treating their distress as a sign of an illness that needs medication, ignoring its psychosocial causes).
We propose to equip ourselves with a comprehensive model, based not on disease detection but on the promotion of mental health and prevention (of medicalization, chronic suffering, social isolation, etc.). We propose the creation of a network of professionals and affected organizations (unemployed, evicted people, etc.) that:
- Recognize your professional and civic responsibility to be actors, and not just victims/spectators of the crisis and its effects.
- Considering clinical practice and/or mutual aid as a laboratory and a privileged tool for producing new knowledge.
- Be prepared to investigate and act on the problems of these people and groups, to the best of your abilities.
Therefore, through a participatory process, different Reflection and Action Groups (RAGs) will be created in the territory to identify needs and develop and implement emotional support actions for those affected by the crisis.
Objectives:
- Develop scientific and outreach material
- Increase the capacity of professionals
- Reduce overmedicalization
- Generate individual, family, and group health promotion activities
- Working for Mental Health-generating communities for these people and families at risk of social exclusion.
- Create emotional support systems
- Investigate and develop the experience that the GRA network implements.
Activities
- Creation of the Reflection and Action Groups (RAG) Network
- Continuing education initiatives.
- Implementation of Emotional Support Groups (ESGs) for trade unions, affected platforms, and neighborhood associations.
- Theoretical elaboration of the experience.
- Spread and facilitate the dissemination of experience throughout Catalonia
- Connect and collaborate with professionals and platforms from other European countries.
Standing Committee
Lluís Isern, Ma José Fernandez, Imma Cortés, Maria Martínez, Ester Boixadera, Víctor Martí.
If you want more information or to participate in the group, contact us at: info@fccsm.net
With the support:
SEPAC Working Group
Capacity building in crisis situations
Young Migrant Space
Who are we?
We are a newly formed group of young people whose goal is reflection, analysis, and the concretization of projects around migratory processes and losses.
What do we do?
Migrant spaces It's a group formed from the European Youth Initiative (ages 17-30) promoted by the FaMiDo Association (Belgium) to build a network of thought among young people from different countries and local actions proposed and carried out by them on topics related to migration processes and their grief, in order to improve detected psychosocial difficulties.
What are our goals?
- Annual meeting with other European youth groups to exchange experiences, reflections, and analyses of migratory situations and phenomena.
- Reflection and analysis of concepts and psychological and social impacts in migration processes.
- Generate awareness activities for the general population to promote inclusion and social cohesion.
- Carry out activities for the promotion of mental health for young immigrants.
- Organize training-experiential workshops
Our activities
- Meeting and sharing the work of each group in Belgium (August 2018)
- Presentation of the analysis and reflection of the different European youth groups at the European Parliament (October 2018)
- Preparation of workshops for young immigrants and locals to work through migratory grief and raise awareness among the general population.
Our projects
Project information “The game suitcase”
The Game Suitcase consists of creating games (board games, role-playing games, etc.) about migratory grief.
The young people from Migraespai and Familles du Monde are responsible for designing these games to playfully experience what migratory losses represent.
Information Tri-fold about the project Game Suitcase (Untamed - between two knees)
>>> Game Pilot Test “Pain for the Family”
Working days In Belgium
Project information “I'll accompany you!”
This is a project to promote processes for welcoming and integrating refugees. The Migraespai group will manage the volunteers from the Catalan Congress of Mental Health Foundation (FCCSM) to assist newcomers to the city with various tasks.
Do you want to be part of our project?
Sign up for the volunteer program I'll accompany you.
Contact us!!
Interview conducted with the Migraespai Youth Group
«We believe that for any institution and for society, the perspective of young people is interesting for contrasting themes, opinions, and experiences.»
We invite you to read the’full interview
Who is part of the group?
YouthValerija Jovanovska, Hung-Ling Wong, Lin Chen, Patricia Carrillo, Lucia Pinzani, Chao Zheng, Luciana Wachokier, and Julieta Ciliberto.
CoordinatorsÀngels Vives and Marta Figueras
Images of the group
Contact
Do you want to be part of the Youth Group? Do you want to receive more information about the group? Contact us at the email address info@fccsm.net
With the support:
Young Migrant Space
Analysis of migration processes and grief
Hello Mental Health Childhood and Adolescence
Youth mental health promotion space
Who are we?
A group of professionals with an interdisciplinary background (psychology, pedagogy, psychiatry, social work, nursing, etc.) who work within the public mental health care network for children and adolescents.
What do we do?
- Periodic meetings for the analysis and discussion of issues related to the mental health care situation for children and adolescents, and the proposal of improvements.
- Organization of the Catalan Congress on Child and Adolescent Mental Health.
- Organization of training and research support activities.
Who is part of the group?
Miriam Berrio, Jordi Borràs, Susana Brignoni, Maisa Campos, Rosa Cano, Daniel Cañero, Jaume Claret, Daniel Cruz, Anna de Jesús, Eva España, Ester Fornells, Sònia Fuentenebro, Myriam Garcia, Carme Grifoll, Fernando Lacasa, Cristina Lombardia, Víctor Martí, Albert Montaner, Josep Moya, Empar Murgui, Susagna Nevado, Ma Reyes Nogués, Montse Pàmias, Vanessa Pera, Teresa Ribalta, Anna Robert, Sunsi Segú, Rut Sonabend, Carme Tello, Francesc Vilà, Àngels Vives, Brenda Tarragona, Alejandro Velázquez, Marta Cabré, Montserrat Bassols and Constanza Gairal.
Coordinators: Josep Moya and Myriam Garcia
8th CCSM for Childhood and Adolescence, March 14 and 15, 2024
If you want more information or to participate in the group, contact us at: info@fccsm.net
With the support:
Hello Mental Health Childhood and Adolescence
Youth mental health promotion space