Ismael Domínguez Calatayud. Colegio Alfinach. 5º primaria. Valencia.
Each person in the world is different from another, and it makes us unique. Each person understands things in its own way and not everybody can process information in the correct way. Our mental health is very important every day, for everyone. Araceli Calatayud Torres works with mental health daily, helping people with her job.
What is your job and where do you work?
I’m a clinical psychologist. I work in Centro de Terapia de Conducta de Valencia. It’s a private center of psychology with a big experience in psychological treatments in all areas. Besides, we have a Master on Clinical Psychology and I work as professor as well. We have near 100 people a year on it, all of them are psychologists…
How long have you being working there?
I work In Centro de Terapia de Conducta de Valencia for 20 years approximately.
What does your work consist on?
Well, my work consists in resolving emotional problems such as anxiety, depression, treatment for mental problems as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, eating disorder and behavior problems … Also, I work with children, families and old people.
As professor, I teach other psychologists about Cognitive Therapy and its techniques.
What kind of patients do you usually work with?
Well, I really work with all kind of patients. Now I’m working with some eating disorder patients, behavior problems patients and some mental problems patients with esquizofrenia, but every week we have new ones… Each person has his personal problem and it’s different from another person. Some of the people that come to the centre have more than one problem at the same time; It needs evaluation, and different treatments for each problem… And every person works different.
In the actual situation with Covid-19, how is your work? Has it changed a lot?
It’s an abnormal situation and our lives have changed totally. So my work has come 2.0 in a few days. Normally, before national alarm state, people came to our center, and we worked with them in our office, but now they can’t come; other patients were treated online because distance or other problems. I usually worked with patients online but now all of the patients must be treated online, so the demand of this service multiplied since Covid-19 appears. We were prepared for that because we usually work this way in our day a day.
About the Master, we are working with online platforms for more than 15 years, so we integrate the face-to-face modality to the online platforms that we have, and this way all of our students are working and receiving their training in time.
What do you like most about your job?
The most I like of my job is helping people making their lives better and easier and get people face their problems to make them normalize their lives as soon as it can be.
Why do you think mental health is important?
Because if you have a good mental health you can face your life from a better point of view. Mental health makes you stronger and helps you in your day a day. I can contribute as psychologist helping people doing that. It’s amazing, and I like it very much!
