Ricardo Gusmão

In 2013, several actions and tasks were undertaken to install EUTIMIA and support its sustainability: the first was its legal creation in august 2013, followed by the election of governance boards, shared design and dissemination of rules and strategy within the governance bodies, membership in the International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP), venue on the XXVII World Congress of the IASP Congress in Oslo, definition of different task teams and functions associated with them, search and analysis of probable funding sources for daily management and functioning. Many contacts envisaging partnerships were established. The transformation of EUTIMIA in an NGO to expand towards Portuguese speaking countries was foreseen.

During 2014 new associates were recruited, internal and external network expanded (facebook, twitter, website, and others), the four branches of intervention: Superviver-e (peer-to-peer support and clinical services), Doutrinar-e (action programmes and community services), Peritar-e (research projects and network), and Concatenar-e (organization, logistics and sustainability) were operationalised through establishing partnerships with national and international organizations, public and private, with a focus on Portuguese-speaking, appeal to the social responsibility of private for non profit organizations,  proposals to the EEA Grants and HORIZON 2020 initiatives were submitted, and become a full NGOD - Non Governmental Organization for Development.

2015, gave us the opportunity, with an EEA Grants finance support to start the implementation of PrimeDep and WhySchool, projects destined to train primary health care physicians and teachers in mental health, prevent and follow depression, suicide attempts and survivors.

The first three months of 2016, will lead us to the conclusion of the above mentioned projects, but we are doing, and aim to do, so mutch more!