Mental health care is one of the great challenges we have faced as a society in recent decades. According to data published in August by the World Health Organization, it is estimated that 4% of the population experiences depressionincluding 5.7% of adults and 5.9% of those over 70 years of age. Worldwide, approximately 332 million people suffer from this disease. Among the age group of 15 to 29 years, suicide is the third cause of death.
The pandemic highlighted the need to address this problem from different points, starting with the health, political and social aspects. Javier Quinterowho is currently responsible for Psychiatry ServiceInfanta Leonor University Hospital (Madrid), has been working all his life in the mental health field. He has been Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the Autonomous University of Madrid and now teaches at the Complutense University, in Psychiatry and Medical Psychology. «The pandemic caused many things to blow up that were held in a very fragile way, which explains why we are now experiencing a peak of disorders such as depression or anxiety», he says in an interview for LA RAZÓN. While it is true that this means that these problems come more into the public sphere and it becomes normal to talk about them, for Quintero it is also true that “Talking more does not mean talking better.”
His professional career has led him to highlight the importance of what is called «biopsychosocial model»which suggests that when understanding and dealing with mental disorders, three parts must be taken into account: the biological, which has to do with neurodevelopment and genetics; the psychological, related to coping strategies and personal growth; and a social part. As this professional explains, in recent times “certain stereotypes are appearing that are causing these serious things to not be talked about as well as they should be.” There is a tendency to have very specific visions, very biological, very social, or very psychological… “And this impoverishes and makes it difficult to find effective solutions,” he says.
To exemplify this, the head of Psychiatry at Infanta Leonor talks about the issue of drugs. By more actively addressing issues such as depression, it has quickly turned into “a fight against drugs.” Although he defends that “it is not about promoting them,” he also emphasizes that “we must put at the center what is the best treatment for a person. In a context where every day our mouths fill more with personalized medicinesuddenly we fall into general resources, saying, no to pills,” Quintero laments.
On many occasions, patients have come to this doctor’s office with a categorical “no” to drugs, “which sometimes means having to tell them that, like this, it will be very difficult to solve what is happening to them.” There are also contrary cases, in which patients come with their preferences about what medications to take: “They say that their cousin has done very well, without even knowing whether or not they have the same medicines as their cousin,” he says.
For Quintero, one of the wonderful things about medicine is “being able to understand the patient, not just the disease. For this reason We must attend to the biological, psychological and social». Otherwise, “we tend to have a very partial view of the problem,” he says.
Javier Quintero just published his second book, under the title “How are you?: 21 days to create the habit of being happy.” Although bookstores categorize it as self-help, for him it is a “self-care” book, because “help often involves waiting for someone to come and give you a hand, while care is sought more on an individual level.”
For this psychiatrist, happiness is aligning “what you think, what you do and what you feel”, although We often confuse it with achievements. While it is true that getting things you want generates great satisfaction, it is something specific. Happiness, on the contrary, “is a process, a constant in life, a path, not a goal,” considers the interviewee.
In his work and throughout his career he has spoken a lot about the differences between pleasure and happiness. «Many people think that the first attracts the second, when in reality they are almost antagonistic. Pleasure is ephemeral, momentary and has to do with me; Happiness is lasting and has to do with giving, not receiving, and with others,” he explains. This does not mean that we do not have to seek pleasure, but that we know that happiness is not found in it. “Even at a biological level it is different because pleasure has to do with dopamine, and serotonin is what is linked to happiness,” he points out.
Another of its great dogmas is that there is no greater person responsible than oneself for finding this long-awaited happiness. While it is true that “everything else influences”, it is also true that Having everything in your favor does not guarantee you being happy, “just like having everything against you does not make it impossible for youalthough it does complicate it for you. Along these lines, this psychiatrist defends that “life is not what happens to you but how you deal with it,” and that this is confirmed by verifying that “Not all rich people are happy.”
Be aware
The days that are normally established to confirm that an action becomes a habit are 21. In each of them, Quintero raises reflections that he considers important so that the reader dedicates time to think about themselves, prioritize themselves and take care of themselves. “If we are more aware of the environment, of the things I can do to feel better, of how I talk to myself or of the signals that my body is giving me, it is much easier to be happy,” he defends. That ordered vision is precisely what allows us to do so. To exemplify this, he talks about the mythical question that many of us hear every day but do not usually answer honestly: “How are you?”.
Quintero defines these two words as “the door to emotional awareness.” Consider that, “when the neighbor on the third floor sees you in the doorway and asks you that question, while you are walking down the stairs half asleep, you answer that you are fine and continue. You don’t really stop to think about how you are that morning. And our body is constantly telling us how we are, another thing is that we do not pay attention to it.
Many of the people who come to this doctor’s office tell him that they are not well but that they do not know what else to explain. «I really insist that they do it, that they look for the words. Although perhaps I know how to define what they feel better than them, If they don’t explain how they are, they don’t understand how they are. “That’s where you work,” the author of “How are you?: 21 days to create the habit of being happy,” which is now on sale, firmly believes.
This book, far from being a manual, is a invitation to discover what factors require our attention to live a happy life. The environment, self-care, what we tell ourselves or the signals our body sends us daily are (just) some of them.
Quintero has been working with this model that can bring us closer to happiness for many years, “practically since the last century,” he recalls with a laugh. A little over two years ago, after giving a conference in Barcelona, several attendees approached him to thank him for his presentation. «They told me that it had been very good but that it was a shame that this content only reached the people who were there or my patients. “They asked me why I didn’t write a book and I thought they were right,” he says. Now, with it on the market, he feels great satisfaction knowing that the information he has been collecting for years is available to anyone.