»After I started my own business with a colleague, we worked for the first three years in hospitals throughout Spain, now I'm mainly active in Madrid.
I previously lived and worked in Mexico and England. In Spain I made the experience that Spaniards were not acting friendly towards psychologists at the beginning of the economic crisis.
There was a stigma that we would treat only madmen. Meanwhile this stigma has changed, because for example the newspaper El país published articles by psychologists four years ago and that was useful.
We don't only have an economic crisis here but also a crisis of values. We have to be funny, we need to have success and we are so occupied by this fixed idea of happiness, that we don't realise that this is not life. Life means also suffering, poor and ordinary moments.
But everyone wanted to be absolutely successful. We were obsessed with having money, to spend it and to have even more. The reason, why money reached such a significance, was not so much the money itself, but our idea of success and happiness, which is mediated via the media.
It is most important during this crisis, that people know themselves better and are connected to themselves and are connected simultaneously with the community, which is ruled usually by individualism. To be happy, it's crucial that you do not relentlessly try to be happy, but accept that life consists also of poor and ordinary moments.
I noticed also in recent years in Spain that psychotropic drugs, which were previously prescribed in a limited way by neurologists, are now prescribed very generously by general practitioners, too. And without acceptably informing the patient about the side effects of drugs.«