‘I change everything’: the new initiative from San Juan de Dios to promote mental health
The hospital of San Juan de Dios in the city of Barcelona follows up another year with a new campaign: promoting mental health in young people.
In March 2019, San Juan de Dios decided to start a solidarity project called “Latidos” (“Heartbeats” in English) that had the intention of promoting reflection and public awareness on situations of vulnerability and social exclusion.
Through their website and social networks such as Instagram and Youtube, they trust that the most practical and moving way to reach its audience is with real testimonies from people who have suffered directly from the situations they are exposing, to provoke reflection and more citizen involvement and at the same time promote a change in the attitudes and values that hopefully leads us to a more fair and inclusive society.
This year they have come up with a new campaign: “I change everything”, in which they expose a new generation of young people who want to break the prejudices and stigmas associated with eating disorders, anxiety and depression or addiction to new technologies and cannabis.
Four young people: Yaiza, Sergi, Cristina and Guillem, share through a four-episode documentary their stories and how they dealt with them with the idea of promoting a different point of view to these disorders and humanize them.
Yaiza, is 20 years old and entered San Juan de Dios for the first time when she was 16, due to an eating disorder: Anorexia nervosa.
Since then, she has come a long way on being able to understand her illness and more importantly to be able to accept and control it.
“People used to say I was anorexic, but I was not, I had anorexia. It feels important for me to emphasise that an eating disorder is not something that you can be, since it does not define us as people, although socially sometimes there is a false belief that it does.”
People believe that anorexia is believing your fat, not eating, and an extreme concern about your own physical appearance.
“I joined the “I change everything” initiative because I strongly believe it’s time to break the stigmas once and for all. That is not anorexia for me. Anorexia, comes from not knowing how to manage your problems and emotions, so you end up focusing everything on the illness because it seems more practical than actually facing your own problems.”
Yaiza was raised on an unstable family nucleus and consequently had many episodes where her hunger would go away for weeks and consequently, she stopped eating and started drifting apart from her friends, that is where she recognizes that her problem began.
“It is like having two voices in your head: One of them you recognize it as the “sick” voice, which tells you things such as: “Don’t eat, you are going to feel extremely guilty afterwards” or “go for a run instead.”
And then you have the voice of reason that knows deep down that if you continue like this you are probably going to die.”
In her episode of the four-episode documentary, Yaiza recalls how for her horse riding was a great help to cope when she was ill since it gave her the option to disconnect from her surroundings and focus on something that really made her happy.
She also recounts the difficulty that people with an eating disorder usually have in realizing that they are sick, when it seems really easy to see it from the outside.
“I’ve been through a lot of treatments and have met a lot of psychologist through my process, but until other factors such as family and friends where not sorted out I couldn’t really follow the guides and tips they were giving me to get better. I think the most important part of the process is realizing you are sick and then wanting to get better, as for many getting better means gaining weight which sounds terrifying for them”.
In the last year, Yaiza has gotten much better, stating she is the happiest she’s ever been in the last four years. She’s started studying childhood education, although her ultimate goal would be to become a nurse in order to help in the same way that she was helped and taken care of back in the day.
With this four-episode documentary, a new season of social awareness begins at the San Juan de Dios hospital in Barcelona, advertising themselves already on social networks such as Instagram, and trying to reach young audiences with the aim of a more fair, more cultured society and more comprehensive for everyone in the future.
Feature image from @yaiza_22 instagram.
This was very interesting to read! I would maybe add a disclaimer that the article discusses eating disorders in depth, as some readers might be sensitive to that. Otherwise, the quotes are really personal and impactful and the rhythm makes it easy to read. It’s definitely an important subject to explore. Perhaps breaking down some of the longer sentences would be useful, testing with the ‘would I be out of breath if I read this out loud’ rule.
Hi Ginebra, this is an interesting and thought-provoking piece about how a hospital in your city has sought to tackle problems such as eating disorders among young people. What’s not entirely clear, though, is whether you actually spoke to Yaiza, or whether the quotes from her have been sourced from the series of short films mentioned? I think it’s the latter, but one of your emails mentioned ‘a friend of mine (who suffered an eating disorder)’ – so is this Yaiza or someone else? We should always make our sources clear to the reader, but overall I would say you have done a good job with your feature, and I’m really pleased that you were able to contribute to our second news day. Well done.