For yet another year, the Sant Cugat Campus played host to the latest edition of the Forum on Mental Health, co-organised by the University Institute for Patient Care and Janssen as part of the activities scheduled for the Innovative Classroom in Healthcare Policy. This time, the event drew a number of professionals from the fields of Social Care and Health with a view to discussing and elaborating on current issues surrounding mental health stigma and employment from a comprehensive perspective.

Europe’s demographic structure, with increased life expectancy, fewer people with contributive capacity and an increase in the prevalence of chronic illness, will lead to higher morbidity in the coming years. In this context, mental conditions and addictions are among the health problems with a higher and increasing health, social and economic burden in most countries, forcing healthcare systems to adapt quickly to cope with such unprecedented change.

The key to helping people with mental health conditions improve and achieve stability has much to do with employment. As a result, the main topic of discussion in the most recent edition of the Forum on Mental Health was the stigmatisation patients often experience in the world of work.

Participants in the event included Dr Albert Balaguer, dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at UIC Barcelona; Dr Cristina Molina, director of the Government of Catalonia’s Master Plan for Mental Health and Addictions; Dr Sara Berbel, director-general of Barcelona Activa; Dr Leandro Tacons, institutional coordinator for the AMMFEINA Group; Dr Pere Bonet, president of the Mental Health Cluster of Catalonia; Dr Emilio Rojo, lecturer in the Area of Psychiatry at UIC Barcelona; Dr Jesús Honorato, full professor of Pharmacology at the University of Navarra; and Dr Boi Ruiz, director of the Healthcare Management and Health Policy Chair and the University Institute for Patient Care at UIC Barcelona.

The attached document contains the ten key points surrounding employment and mental health, which include job insecurity as a new risk factor for mental health, the creation of new collaborative strategies, a new paradigm for non-exclusion, a new academic approach to mental health and the role of the media in the social stigmatisation of these conditions.