Costa says “significant investments” are needed in mental health and support in schools

This Saturday, the Prime Minister, Antonio Costa, assumed that it was necessary to make a “significant investment” in health facilities to focus on mental health and assumed that the program to integrate psychologists into schools was “slow”.

“It is a huge investment to make and to train the various health institutions to be able to respond to these needs. It’s also a program that is being developed, very slowly in this case, about getting psychologists into school so that there is better monitoring, better protection, and a better response to mental health problems among young people. ’,” said Antonio Costa at the “Futures of Europe” conference, which took place this afternoon in Serralves, Porto.

Antonio Costa was speaking following a question from Guilherme Almeida, an 11th-year economics student at Fontes Pereira de Mello High School, in Porto, who on Saturday warned the prime minister of the need to support young people to prevent mental illness. .

We urgently need to make changes in this regard. The covid-19 pandemic has led to an increase in mental health cases and in fact I have recently been through a very complicated situation. I saw a young man in front of me having an anxiety attack and I didn’t know what to do. I left school feeling confident that I had to do something to change this. There are very few educational projects to combat this, to teach young people how to respond. This is necessary, Prime Minister,” Guilherme pleaded with Almeida.

Antonio Costa highlighted an important fact in Portuguese society as he started talking about “mental health”.

Until recently, people did not take mental health issues as a health issue. It was taboo. It was something to be ashamed of. The Prime Minister defended the first barrier.

Costa noted that there is a national mental health strategy, approved over a year ago, and that funds from the Recovery and Resilience (PRR) program, among the dimensions of vulnerability, will essentially fill in two dimensions.

He promised “continuous integrated care to respond to the elderly and implement the mental health strategy”.

Renewable energies, nuclear energy, education reforms, teaching in Portugal with autonomy and flexibility in the curricula, programs for the internationalization of culture and artists in Portugal, among others, were some of the topics covered in Antonio Costa’s conversation with several students at the conference on “The future of Europe” “.

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