Today, 10 October, we celebrate World Mental Health Day. On this significant date, we share the words of our Superior General, Sister Idilia María Carneiro, who invites us to reflect on the importance of caring for mental health and to live this year’s motto: “Hospitality: a path of hope in the service of Mental Health.”
Reflecting on mental health in the current context is both an imperative and a commitment, which must go beyond economic, political, cultural, or even ideological considerations. It is a complex reality, both known and unknown, often unrecognised, influenced by individual, family, environmental, cultural, economic, political, and structural factors.
We are interconnected beings, understanding our existence as a network linked by very fragile fibres and tenuous boundaries, exposed to adverse circumstances that pave the way for the emergence of major and specific mental health issues. We recall violence and war, migration and poverty, violations of rights; the lack of respect for human dignity, of peoples and nations, inequalities, and social and economic imbalances.
As everything is connected, it affects our existential equilibrium. Some factors facilitate and protect it, while others trigger risks and ruptures. Daily, we are exposed to these factors that test our resilience.
Mental health goes beyond the individual or family sphere, and in recent years it has become an integral part of care for people at corporate, cultural, economic, and ethical levels, filling countless discourses. It seems to seek to set political priorities and national and international programmes.
Today, we are more aware of our fragility and vulnerability. We are concerned not only with mental health disorders, which include people with mental illnesses or disabilities, but also with the balance and mental well-being that allow people to face life’s stressful moments, develop all their skills, learn and work effectively, and integrate into their communities.
Mental health is an essential component of health and is more than the absence of mental disorders. It is more than a right and concerns everyone. It has intrinsic and fundamental value and forms part of our overall well-being. Caring for it is a necessity.
On 10 October, we will celebrate World Mental Health Day under the motto “Mental Health for All: Accessible and Inclusive,” which reinforces the urgency of universal access.
While many measures have been taken, millions of people still lack access to healthcare. People with mental health issues suffer stigma, discrimination, and human rights violations.
For the Hospitaller Sisters, mental health and the care of those experiencing psychological suffering and psychosocial disability are the preferred focus of our mission in the Church for the world. Our hospital model unites science and humanity, technique and spirituality, grounded in the Christian understanding of the person. These are the coordinates of our action, defining the universal meaning of Hospitality, which welcomes all.
For the Hospitaller Community, scientific knowledge is complemented by rehabilitative compassion, dignifying closeness, and healing comfort. Our global presence, in such diverse realities and contexts, adds a challenging dimension to the care process and represents a commitment to social justice for those who remain the poorest of the poor.
We aspire for our mission as Hospitaller Sisters to be a compassionate network with global reach, operating in increasingly vulnerable contexts, amid severe humanitarian crises and successive disease outbreaks. Our commitment is to provide a healthy and dignifying space for the most fragile, and for people with mental disorders and psychosocial disabilities, in a society suffering from a lack of existential meaning, the weakening of the values that structure the true sense of family and universal fraternity, seeking comprehensive care that restores the meaning of BEING HUMAN.
We celebrate this World Mental Health Day in the Jubilee Year of Hope—a fundamental dimension of life that, in itself, possesses a therapeutic force that generates meaning.
Sister Idilia María Carneiro