Alicante General Hospital to Establish Neuromodulation and Psychiatric Units

New resources to improve mental healthcare at Alicante General Hospital. The center will feature a Neuromodulation Unit equipped for electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), and home-based transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), as well as an inpatient psychiatric unit. This was announced on Wednesday by Bartolomé Pérez, the Director General of Mental Health and Addictions, at the 'III Alicante Mental Health Conference: Melancholy, Psychosis, and Suicide in the 21st Century'.

The psychiatric hospitalisation unit «will be definitively located within the hospital's own facilities,» the official pointed out.

This Wednesday's event, organised by the Psychiatry Section of the Doctor Balmis University General Hospital and the Alicante Institute for Health and Biomedical Research (ISABIAL), brought together over 150 mental health professionals from the province of Alicante, including specialists, MIR, PIR, EIR in Mental Health, students, as well as other professionals interested in the field.

During the meeting, two major aspects were discussed: the conception and care required by people with severe mental disorders in today's society, as well as suicide prevention in the Valencian Community, with special attention to the child and adolescent population.

In the first round table, leading experts from various parts of the country participated, including Emiliano Bruner, a researcher in Palaeoneurobiology at the National Museum of Natural Sciences of the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC); psychiatrist Fernando Colina and Rafael Huertas, Research Professor at the Department of History of Science at the CSIC Institute of History.

«Firstly, we focused on sadness, which today, from Palaeobiology, we can understand as a characteristic inherent to our species, linked to the cognitive and intellectual development that characterises us. This sadness, combined with anxiety and stress, can lead us to depression and melancholy, which constitute the most classic form of human madness and the common background of the rest of the known psychoses,» explained Dr Enrique Pérez.

During the event, a tribute was paid to Dr Bartolomé Llopis, a native of La Vila Joiosa and one of the most important psychiatrists in Spanish history, who was able to see and develop a unique theory of psychosis.

In a second panel, moderated by Tomás Cantó, psychiatrist of the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Unit (USMIA) of San Vicente-II, Mental Health in the child and adolescent population was addressed, with experts Francisco Villar, clinical psychologist and coordinator of the Suicide Programme of the Hospital Sant Joan de Déu in Barcelona, and Natalia García and Carmen Cañada, nurse and psychiatrist at the Príncipe de Asturias University Hospital in Madrid.

Experts have highlighted that this segment of the population is experiencing high rates of emotional distress and suicide, which have increased in the post-COVID-19 pandemic.

In this regard, as part of the event, an art exhibition was inaugurated with works created by mental health users who are part of 'Alicarte Diversa'. This is an artistic community born from the therapeutic accompaniment of psychiatrist Pablo Pelayo, who recently promoted the creation of the project with some of his patients, with the desire to generate an artistic space that was not only therapeutic but also transformative and collective.