Brightly designed room, exuberant pink lighting, a bathtub to relax and several phones with a phone directory carrying numbers of mental health professionals. One sign at the corner says, ‘crying corner” while on the entrance you will find “Enter and cry” written. Welcome to Spain‘s crying room. A place dedicated to support people experiencing mental health troubles and want to let it out.

Along with other essentials like tissue papers and a comfortable spot to sit, the ‘crying room’ also has a number of psychologists and health experts if visitors want to seek help. The room also has several phones to facilitate the process.

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Located in abuilding in Central Madrid, ‘La Lloreria’, which translates to ‘Crying Room’ is a Spanish government’s initiative to raise awareness regarding mental health issues and eradicate various taboos related to it.

This comes a week after Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez separately announced a 100-million-euro ($116 million) mental healthcare drive, which will include services such as a 24-hour suicide helpline.

It is not a taboo, it is a public health problem that we must talk about, make visible and act accordingly,” the prime minister said about mental illness as he launched the plan on October 10, World Mental Health Day.

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Mental Health issues, anxiety and crying has been a hush-hush topic in Spain as well as in the rest of the world due to a lack of awareness and conversation about these issues.

The motivation behind the initiative is to make people understand that it is okay to take out time and cry for a while rather than keeping it all in and normalise talking about mental health issues.

The idea is being happily accepted and widely appreciated across Madrid. “It is a really excellent idea to visualise the mental health issue. It is stigmatised to cry in Spain as in many other countries,” said Jon Nelssom, a Swedish student who lives in the Spanish capital.

In 2019 alone, at least 3,671 people died from suicide in Spain, the second most common cause of death after natural causes. One in 10 adolescents has been diagnosed with a mental health condition while 5.8% of the overall population suffers from anxiety, according to government data.