The counselor, Esther Monzón, the general director of Mental Health and Addictions, Fernando Gómez-Pamo, and the president of the Canarian Basketball Federation, Carlos Olano, presented today the project ‘Includes without limits’ aimed at health promotion and prevention mental and addictions among the young population of the Canary Islands with diverse abilities through basketball
The Minister of Health of the Government of the Canary Islands, the general director of Mental Health and Addictions of the SCS, Fernando Gómez-Pamo, and the president of the Canarian Basketball Federation, Carlos Olano, presented this Thursday, October 3, at the Quico Pavilion Cabrera of Santa Cruz de Tenerife the project Includes without limits, aimed at the promotion and prevention of mental health and addictions among the young population of the Canary Islands with diverse abilities through basketball.
During this event, held within the framework of a training session, agreements were signed that consolidate the participation of the institutions and entities involved, with the aim of achieving the agreed goals.
Counselor Esther Monzón stated that “this innovative project aims to integrate prevention and promotion actions for mental health in the educational, social, community and sports fields, adapting to the diverse capacities of people as a tool to promote personal autonomy and always maintaining a gender perspective.”
To achieve this, Includes without limits will develop a series of community and sports events and activities in various parts of the archipelago, combining sports, especially basketball, with the promotion of personal and community mental health, based on the values of sports.
Includes without limits is aimed at a diverse population, with a main focus on young people with and without disabilities from the Canary Islands, especially young people between twelve and twenty-one years old, with special attention to those who present risk factors that may generate dependency or addictive behaviors. , such as experimental consumption, socio-emotional difficulties or poor participation in healthy activities.
The general director of Mental Health and Addictions announced that meeting spaces will be created where young people with and without disabilities participate together in adapted sports activities, awareness workshops and mutual support groups. “In these spaces, participating people with disabilities will assume a leading role, acting as mentors and positive references for their peers,” he added.
Among the objectives of the project are to promote inclusion and equality in all sporting environments, ensuring that every young person, regardless of their circumstances, can actively participate and benefit from a healthy environment, promote mental health through specific programs that integrate the practice of basketball and other sports as a tool to strengthen resilience and emotional well-being, and collaborate closely between the sports system, the socio-health system and the socio-community system, to ensure that efforts reach the target population, providing support and necessary resources.
Line of action
The project includes a line of action called Aliar-Commit in which the aim will be to create a network that brings together and aligns all those resources involved in the prevention of risk behaviors that generate dependency and health promotion, in and from sport. , prioritizing young people with some functional impairment, entities, institutions and social agents of both the socio-community system and the sports system.
For his part, the president of the Canarian Basketball Federation highlighted the importance of sport as an integrating element, “since it transmits values such as camaraderie, improvement, equality and respect to youth.”
This initiative will focus on launching activities that will put youth at the center, along with their families and the social and sports fabric. Includes without limits will be developed under the motto Pro-knit to protect, an idea that highlights the value of institutional and sectoral involvement and collaboration in this community health promotion model.
Mental Health Resources
Counselor Esther Monzón reiterated that “for the Ministry of Health, the care and prevention of mental health and addiction problems is one of the main strategic lines in which we are especially committed. This commitment that I speak of is materialized in a series of actions, projects and devices that we have launched in the Canary Islands during the last year in the field of Mental Health.”
Thus, he recalled the development and implementation of new protocols that will help standardize and organize assistance to people with mental health problems, such as the Intervention Protocol for suicidal risk detected in educational institutions in the Canary Islands; the Care Protocol for women with serious mental disorders during pregnancy, childbirth and the postpartum period, the project ‘Healthy Activities with Women Users of Resources that Treat Addictions’.
“In addition, we have launched assistance devices, such as the La Laguna Mental Health Unit, the Eating Disorders unit in the Juan Carlos I Hospital annex, and the Child and Youth Mental Health Unit of the CAE of Telde and the Early Care Unit of the Doctor José Molina Orosa University Hospital of Lanzarote, among other resources,” Monzón added.