Human Rights Action (HRA), Center for women and peace education (ANIMA) and Mental Disability Advocacy center (MDAC), within the project “Beyond exclusion – effective rights for mental health patients” supported by the European Union through EU Delegation in Montenegro and Kotor Municipality, provided a series of public lectures on various topics of mental health. The aim of these lectures is to improve information and awareness on the rights and needs of persons with mental disabilities, including their reintegration into society. During November we had the opportunity to hear two psychologists from Belgrade – Lidija Vasiljević who spoke about stigma and discrimination of people with mental disabilities and Lepa Mlađenović, who spoke about Anti-psychiatry movement which influenced the process of deinstitutionalization of persons with mental disabilities.
Lidija Injac Stevović, dr psychiatry and assistant professor of psychiatry at the Medical Faculty of the University of Montenegro, on Friday 9 December at 5 p.m, in the hall of the Educational Center within the SPB Kotor.will hold last lecture on depression.
The lectures are intended both for the public and employees of the SPB Kotor, as a place of encounter and exchange of knowledge and experiences with lectures from the country and region, which would open a range of topics of importance to the treatment and rights of persons with mental disabilities. The fact that a public debates will be organized within the Hospital provides “crossing an invisible border”, which, as a rule, there are about closed institutions in which there are people with mental disabilities. Population of Kotor has over half a century of experience of social distance which is necessary to minimize by the humanization of interpersonal relationships that begins with new knowledge and willingness to talk and exchange.
The lectures are open for all interested parties. In particular, we encourage interested members of the community, family members of people with mental disabilities, professional and activist public and media representatives to, with their participation in the discussion, help to walls of prejudice that separate us become more permeable and less painful.
