La Llorería opens in Spain, a space to make mental health visible

Regarding Mental Health Month, the Madrid neighborhood of Malasaña (Spain) hosted for three days a space called La Llorería, devised by an advertising agency that aimed to “make visible the importance of mental health and end the stigma to go to the psychologist, a current taboo in society ”, according to its promoters.

La Despensa agency, creator of the brand space for the online psychologist service Therapychat was open for free for three days on Calle San Andrés 3 with a tour that invited us to reflect on mental health problems and where an invitation was also granted to have 60 minutes of free online psychological therapy.

“A space full of ‘photographic’ and interactive corners that reflect on the main mental health problems and invite people to flood social networks with content hitherto hidden”the creators explained in a statement.

In social networks this space has been received in different ways: those who emphasize that it is normalized to talk about mental health issues to those who criticize that they are seeking to romanticize situations that afflict thousands of Spaniards with a marketing campaign.

According to the latest report on the “State of the World’s Children 2021”, published by Unicef, Spain is the European country with the highest prevalence of mental disorders in children and adolescents between 10 and 19 years of age.

This report, prepared with pre-pandemic data from 2019, estimates that 20.8% of young people between these ages suffer from mental disorders such as depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, eating disorders, some type of autism, conduct disorder, attention deficit or schizophrenia, among others.

Likewise, a study published in The Lancet reports that cases of depression and anxiety increased an average of 25% in the world in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The study is the first to evaluate the impact of the pandemic on clinical depressive problems and anxiety, divided by age, sex and location in 204 countries and territories in 2020.

The results show that depression increased by 28% and anxiety by 26%, in 2020.

With information from EFE and AFP