Mental health consultations increased on Friendship Day

It is known that the effects of the coronavirus pandemic have emotionally generated an impact, the consequences of which are still in the process of being revealed. Since his release, mental health consultations have skyrocketed, favoring this scenario due to the use of new technologies during lockdown.

Mental disorders are among the top five causes of illness in America. Alcohol and depression are the most common mental health problems. In Argentina, 1 in 3 people have mental health problems after age 20. The most common problems are anxiety disorders, mood problems, and substance use.

For some time now, talking about mental health has been starting to come naturally in the face of demand. For example, July 24 is world self care daya date dedicated to promoting the importance of self-care.

In this sense, the mental health professional Mauro Morelliwho on Fridays has a column in the program Distancia de Rescate, from Mon 12:00 680commented that this date “seeks to focus on the need to pay attention to our emotional well-being and take action, especially to prevent mental health situations”, but in addition, self-care is connected to the support network that friendship often represents.

“Because they are our connections, our network of friends, the people we know, they can represent the emotional support we need to get through the tough times and also strengthen us through the hardships we face. Friends can sometimes give the right advice when we don’t see the problem. A friend can sometimes alert us with his harshness about what we underestimate.

“Friends can warn us that we underestimate”

He gave the example of a man whoreacts very impulsively or that he is too angry for certain everyday situationswhen we see situations of violence with your partner, in your family, difficulties in controlling the consumption of certain substances, tobacco or alcohol, and in this it is important not to remain only in observation, but we can make a recommendation to contact a professional,” Morelli explained.

Lack of friends or support network may indicate a problem. For the professional, friendship corresponds to a social function that we need to develop, to work on, and if we notice difficulties in advancing or expanding our personality in relation to the social, this can be worked on. A friend won’t show up out of nowherebut if little by little I develop other healthy habits, such as engaging in recreational or leisure activities, doing things that benefit me, that make me feel good, enrolling in courses, doing things with other people, this greatly opens up the panorama of friendship, couples, connections, contacts, ”he emphasized.

Morelli then clarified that there is community challenge for generating activitywhich allow the development of interpersonal relationships, for this reason he noted the creation of places for recreation and mass events for the enjoyment of society, especially young people in a region where outdoor activities were even more limited by the weather.

He asked for “active, conscious work to improve these relationships with ourselves and with others, because we clearly lack as a society and We have problems in Rio Gallegosit gives us a lot of need,” he later said of demand for mental health services, which skyrocketed during the day on Thursday, which was Friendship Day.

how could he know southern viewmost consultations took place from night to early the next morning with HRGR care teams and were related to the anguish of being alone on special days.

The same thing happens, for example, during the celebration of New Year holidays such as Christmas or New Year.

In this sense, this medium was able to find out that suicide prevention work was going on, which can be called a common occurrence. However, demand has increased due to several hospitalizations.

In June, the Rio Gallegos Regional Hospital consolidated mental health shifts, which had previously also been held at the center located on Santiago del Estero Street. Today, any person of any age, whose health condition he considers urgent or urgent, can enter through the same security gates and will be given medical attention and referral as needed.

For this Cabinet of psychology, psychiatry and social work which meets the mental health requirements of the hospital’s central security.

Regarding what happened on Friendship Day, Morelli himself claimed that “there is a possible interpretation and it is that there are not enough good friends, many links are missing and this causes a lot of suffering“.

In this sense, the specialist argued that it is necessary to break with the myth regarding mental health, “perhaps one of the most important is the prevention of suicide, It’s a myth that I shouldn’t ask a person if they’re wrong because it makes things worse, that I shouldn’t ask a person if they’ve thought about suicide because it makes things worse., false. Ask positively. Always try not to be judgmental. This person has the right to feel bad, he has the right to have his thoughts that we are as good friends, as a famous person, as a good citizen, what we should do in any case is to provide preventive counseling. If there are ideas of death, if you have suicidal thoughts, if you have thoughts of hopelessness, suffering, if there is this negative view of the future in relation toit has no solution or such phrasesI can’t take this situation anymore. These are phrases that are interpreted as an idea to kill oneself, and this should be evaluated by a professional.“.

In June, HRRG consolidated emergency psychiatric care by a hospital guard.

Thus, for Morelli, “listening to a friend, a loved one is very positive, because it often allows you to relieve emotional stress. When someone speaks, if he wants to speak, and I listen, I give that person relief from his discomfort in the sense that he can release the energy contained in him that he could not express in words.

It’s something that can happen to anyone: “the problem is that if I don’t intervene preemptively so that this idea of ​​death doesn’t follow, that idea can be perpetuated, it can be maintained, I can normalize myself, normalize having such ideas, and there comes a point where I start thinking maybe something worse is needed to ease my discomfort or end my suffering, and that’s where suicide starts to become something more possible, more real to that person,” he added.