The Mental Health Program of the Division of Health Promotion and Protection is developing several activities in the area of healthy and supportive environment initiatives: 1. Protection of human rights for the mentally ill in Central America involving stakeholders at community level. Interdisciplinary activities will take place including lawyers. These workshops enforce the Caracas Declaration in promoting the participation of patients and their families in the planning process of their treatment. 2. Strengthening social participation in establishing healthy public policies, creating healthy and supportive environments for the mentally ill in the British Caribbean (Saint Lucia and Barbados). These policies promote a community approach for the care of the mentally ill, at the same time revising the role of the psychiatric hospitals as the main providers of mental health care. 3. Lessons learned from activities taken to help local leaders implementing health promotion strategies with a gender approach to address depression, including Women’s Organizations, self help groups, training hairdressers to identify and make referrals of probable cases, as well as sensitizing clergy for the same objectives in Panama. 4. Lessons learned from mental health promotion activities with the victims from the earthquake in El Salvador, January 2001. All those activities stress the importance of fighting the stigma associated to mental disorders in the spirit of the logo for the WHO Health Day for the year 2001 that is dedicated to Mental Health: STOP EXCLUSION, DARE TO CARE (Si a la atención, no a la exclusión)
Learning Objectives: (1)To describe the activities taken to promote human rights for the mentally ill in Latin America; (2) To discuss policies promoting community mental health in the Caribbean; (3) To valuate mental health promotion strategies to address depression in Panama; (4) To identify activities taken for mental health promotion of victims of the earthquake in El Salvador, January 2001
Keywords: Mental Health, Latin American
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: Pan American Health Organization
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.