Feeling to Heal

Sofía Daniela Ríos Hoyo

Caring for and attending  to mental health is extremely important, because it includes our emotional, psychological and social well-being; it affects the way we think, feel and act; In addition, it helps to determine how we handle stress and interact with others. Therefore, not having good mental health means that a person faces conditions that prevent them from developing their full potential in life.

Unfortunately, this vitally important aspect of a person’s wellbeing is often neglected and forgotten, despite the fact that it should be a priority in the health system in our country.  For this reason, the initiative campaign “Feeling to Heal” was created, to support a project focused on providing psychological support to children and adults, so that they can enjoy a good quality of life in highly marginalized communities in the State of Mexico: Tultitlán and Lomas de San Isidro.

To understand more in depth the problems that are experienced, and the best way to solve and respond to them, an interview was conducted with the Psychologist Axel Castrejón from AMEXTRA, who talks about mental health and how it was affected during times of contingency in the community of Lomas de San Isidro.

Axel believes that mental health is a basic pillar for the development and quality of life of any person, and if it is affected it can have serious consequences on a personal level, but also at the community level:

“During the time of contingency, the confinement itself was able to bring up these aspects, where for many people it seemed “ normal ” to live with great loads of stress or anxiety, and they saw that they needed help. I think it was also a defining moment for people to get closer to mental health care services ”.

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, mental health was affected and the search for psychological help increased due to stress, anxiety, domestic and intrafamilial violence, among other factors or psychosocial problems.

“There is a stigma around mental health, of: why seek help if you do not see a problem in a tangible way?” Axel Castrejón tells us. This way of thinking in Mexico is dangerous, since people can ignore their psychological problems, problems in their handling of emotions and even psychiatric problems.

To resolve this, it is necessary to end this stigma today, as it is not wrong to seek help. Mexico needs to change: “In the basic education level of public and private institutions, it is necessary to give children information about psycho-emotional education, about how they can manage their emotions. Teach them what the basic emotions are and how to handle them, because you cannot avoid them. It is not wrong to feel sad, it is not wrong to feel angry, what is wrong is how they deal with these emotions. “

It is necessary to create more initiatives that seek to help and that seek to normalize not being well and ask for the help that each person requires according to their specific needs. It is important to support these projects that address mental health such as “Feeling to Heal”, which make visible a deep and growing problem.

For Amextra it is important to support and provide tools and elements that add to and positively impact people’s lives, therefore, we have launched the “Feeling to Heal” project, to provide psychological support to highly marginalized communities that have been seriously affected not only economically, but also health and emotionally by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Support this project and join this awareness campaign for mental health care! https://bit.ly/2Tv35xS