Interest Marta Sánchez Bret, manager of the Mental Health Cluster of Catalunya

The mental diseases They are frequent and common to all countries, generate great suffering and interfere very significantly in the lives of people who suffer from them and those around them. Specifically in Europe they represent the most frequent cause of morbidity and it is estimated that, at least, one in four families there is at least one person with mental disorders. Its impact on the quality of life is superior to many chronic diseases. In fact, 20% of health spending in Europe is dedicated to these processes.

The fan of pathologies included under the epigraph of mental illness is broad. 9% of the Spanish population currently suffers from a mental disorder, excluding from this figure those caused by the improper use of substances, and 15% in suffering in the course of life.

For this reason we have decided to interview Marta Sánchez Bret, manager of the Mental Health Cluster of Catalunya CSMC to explain to us what her work consists of and what actions are being carried out to advance this field.

1. First of all thank Marta for the time borrowed to carry out this interview, it is for me a pleasure to have your experience. Many of our readers will not have heard before what a cluster is, so if you think, to start you could briefly explain what it is and what a cluster consists of.

The term cluster comes from English Cluster, which means "group" or "root". The concept of clusters simply means agglomeration and/or proximity of companies with similar characteristics or dedicated to the same activity.  Something like what we know for a guild, but with a less centralized more centralized value chain.

According to professor and researcher Michael Porter, it is "a large group of companies and institutions, all related to the same economic activity and in the same geographical environment".

There are numerous industry clusters in many countries, including Spain, perhaps one of the best known is that of Silicon Valley with computer science and biotechnology, but there are many more examples, such as automotive in Detroit or software in Bangalore.

Therefore, clusters are not something new, much less, and there are all types: tourism, textile, chemical, editorials, agricultural products, transport, oil, gas, in the end of multiple typologies.

2. What is the main objective of the Mental Health Cluster of Catalonia (CSMC)?

The reason for being of the Mental Health Cluster of Catalonia is to offer people who suffer from mental illnesses and their families a space where research, teaching and healing of these pathologies converge.

The Mental Health Cluster of Catalonia (CSMC) is raised as a geographical concentration of interconnected companies, services and institutions that share the strategic challenges of assistance, training, research and creation of synergies.

Its main mission is to promote the generation of resources applied to the improvement of mental health, thanks to competitiveness between companies and professionals, seeking innovation, interdisciplinary collaboration and internationalization. In the (CSMC) different agents converge: the health, the scientist, the social and the business, who work cooperatively to improve people's mental health.

3. What kind of partner forms the Mental Health Cluster of Catalonia (CSMC)

Currently all kinds of companies dedicated to the promotion of mental health converge, which we have grouped into five categories:

• Clinical and welfare base: Here are hospitals, psychiatric institutions, psychotherapy centers, among others.
• Industrial Base - pharmaceutical industry: In this section, as the name implies, we have the pharmaceutical industries.
• Industrial Base - Complementary Industry: Here we can find technological laboratories, computer platforms, applications, etc. Obviously related to mental health.
• Technological Base of Innovation and Training: Universities, training centers and research parks are included here.
• Institutional and relational basis: This section is social foundations, municipalities and other institutions of social field.

We are proud to have recently reached 50 partners in the cluster, distributed among all these categories.

4. Could you summarize some of the actions that are currently being carried out in the mental health cluster?

Of course, we have currently launched the "Tractor Project”, An interclus initiative organized by the Catalonia mental health cluster and the Health Tech Cluster, whose purpose is to carry out a study as wide as possible as an inventory, of those technological solutions that support the diagnosis, treatment and any aspect that affects The mental health of citizens.

Another action carried out recently together with the MHEALTH COMPENDENCE CENTER MWC and the PDSMYA Advisory Council, is the organization of the second day of Mental health and new technologies.

We all know that the profile of people's health demand has changed because there are more and more older people. The models of attention have also changed, in which there are more and more alternative resources to hospitalization. For this reason digital technology has an impressed challenge, which is to connect. In fact, no matter the technology, what matters is how we connect the patient and the professional. Technology does not cure, but it can help the patient and transform the health system.

There are many technological projects implemented in the field of health, such as several Ehealth web platforms, virtual reality apps and solutions, among others.

New technologies allow, for example, that in countries with difficult weather conditions or with a lot of dispersion of the population, online medical consultation can be passed by videoconference.

It is also possible to help a person with phobia to fly, with an obsessive-compulsive disorder or with anorexia to overcome their disease through virtual reality-based treatments.

5. What are your short, medium and long term plans?

Our main strategic challenges are to create a stable network of cooperation, giving visibility and positioning the members of the cluster at both local and national and international level. Of course also contribute to the advancement of knowledge identifying synergies, generating complementarities and incorporating all the key agents of the system, with the ultimate goal of responding to the challenges posed by the Mental Health Market.

Our intention is to coordinate actions and share resources and information transversely, promoting research potentials and sector companies.