Today, October 10th, we celebrate World Mental Health Day. On this meaningful date, we share the words of our Superior General, Sr. Idilia Maria Carneiro, who invites us to reflect on the importance of caring for mental health and to live this year’s theme: “Hospitality: a path of hope in the service of Mental Health.”
Reflecting on mental health in today’s context is both an imperative and a commitment—one that must go beyond economic, political, cultural, or even ideological issues. It is a complex reality—known and unknown—often unrecognized, influenced by individual, family, environmental, cultural, economic, political, and structural factors.
We are interconnected beings and understand our existence as a network woven with very fragile threads and delicate boundaries, exposed to adverse circumstances that open the way to the emergence of major and specific mental health problems. Recordamos la violencia y la guerra, la migración y la pobreza, la violación de derechos; la falta de respeto a la dignidad humana, de los pueblos y las naciones, las desigualdades y los desequilibrios sociales y económicos.
Since everything is interconnected, all this affects our existential balance. There are factors that protect and facilitate health, and others that trigger risks and ruptures. Every day we are exposed to these factors that test our resilience.
Mental health goes beyond the individual or family sphere. In recent years, it has become an integral part of how people are cared for at social, cultural, economic, and even ethical levels—it fills many discourses. It seems to aim at setting political priorities and national and international programs.
Today we are more aware of our fragility and vulnerability. We are concerned not only with mental health problems that affect those living with mental disorders or disabilities, but also with that equilibrium and mental well-being that enable people to face life’s stressful moments, develop all their abilities, learn, work properly, and integrate into their context.
Mental health is an essential component of health—it is more than the absence of mental disorders. It is more than a right—it concerns everyone! It holds an intrinsic and fundamental value and is part of our overall well-being. It is our duty to care for it.
El 10 de octubre celebraremos el Día Mundial de la Salud Mental, con el lema “Salud mental para todos: accesible e inclusiva“, lo que refuerza la urgencia del acceso universal.
Although many measures have been taken, millions of people still lack access to healthcare. People with mental health problems continue to suffer stigma, discrimination, and violations of their human rights.
Para las Hermanas Hospitalarias, la salud mental y el cuidado de quienes padecen sufrimiento psíquico y discapacidad psicosocial son el ámbito preferido de nuestra misión en la Iglesia para el mundo. Our hospitaller model unites science and humanity, technique and spirituality, grounded in the Christian understanding of the human person. These are the coordinates that guide our mission and define the universal meaning of Hospitality, which embraces everyone.
For the Hospitaller Community, scientific knowledge is complemented by rehabilitative compassion, dignifying closeness, and healing comfort. Nuestra presencia a nivel global, en realidades y contextos tan diversos, le da un color desafiante al proceso de cuidado y representa un compromiso con la justicia social para quienes hoy siguen siendo los más pobres entre los pobres.
We want our mission as Sisters Hospitallers to be a compassionate network with global reach, serving in increasingly vulnerable contexts, amid serious humanitarian crises and successive outbreaks of disease. Our commitment is to be a healthy and dignifying space for the most fragile—those with mental disorders and psychosocial disabilities—within a society suffering from a lack of existential meaning, a weakening of the core values that sustain the true sense of family and universal fraternity, and a longing for holistic care that restores the meaning of BEING HUMAN.
We celebrate this World Mental Health Day in the Jubilee Year of Hope. Hope is a fundamental dimension of life and, in itself, has a therapeutic power that gives meaning.
Sor Idilia Maria Carneiro
