The Son Llàtzer University Hospital this week hosted a round table discussion on mental health and sport. This day was included among the various activities that had been scheduled during this week on the occasion of World Mental Health Day.

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The manager of Son Llàtzer, Francisco Marí, opened the event, followed by Carmen Canet, nursing supervisor of the Psychiatry Service, who stressed the importance of giving visibility to mental illness and destigmatising it.

Since 2021, Son Llàtzer has been a pioneering hospital in implementing the Sport2live programme, which includes sports as part of the therapeutic treatment of day hospital users, with the aim of achieving community integration through sports used as a facilitator of the recovery and rehabilitation processes of people with mental health problems, addiction or social exclusion.

Through its trainer, Miquel Borràs, Sport2live enables users not only to improve their physical condition and self-esteem, but also their levels of self-confidence, the ability to focus on both sporting and personal goals and on constancy and long-term rewards, and also allows them to acquire social skills because it is carried out in a group. The users present at the day participated actively and a video was shown, which they themselves had made, explaining the development of the sessions.

In the second part of the day, Marlén Novás, head of the Communication Department at Son Llàtzer, moderated a debate in which Jaime Cardona, a running enthusiast, spoke about his ability to overcome and his effort to continue running marathons after suffering the amputation of a foot; Two elite sportsmen and women, Paralympic swimmer Xavi Torres and RCD Mallorca player Dani Rodríguez, spoke from a personal and very human point of view about the mental health problems they sometimes suffer from due to social pressure.

In the final part of the debate, there was an interesting exchange of opinions on how to deal with frustrations, how to handle social networks and the importance of asking for help and having a supportive environment. Son Llàtzer would like to thank all the participants for sharing this very useful day with the aim of helping to destigmatise mental illness.