I am Carlos Rentero Castro, general health psychologist.

During my university years in Granada, I always thought I would dedicate myself to Emergency Psychology, a new and exciting branch of our profession. In my first year I started training as a rescuer for Gea’s USAR team, in my second year I signed up as a volunteer in the Civil Protection Association and during my Erasmus in Germany I trained in “Cross-Cultural Management” and perfected my English to be ready to work wherever there was a catastrophe. So much so that before finishing my Psychology degree I enrolled in a Master Degree in Emergency, Catastrophe and Crisis Psychology organized by the College of Psychologists of my region, traveling almost every weekend to Malaga to combine my undergraduate lectures with the master’s. Inspired by my trainers I was about to prepare for the public examinations in order to become a firefighter or a psychologist in the Spanish Emergency Military Unit.

After finishing my degree, I decided to do a master’s degree in General Health Psychology to become a clinical psychologist. At that time I had the opportunity to do an international internship in India. As I had no money, I spent half the summer working as a waiter in Italy to finance the trip. During August I worked with RCDSSS Ajmer and Diksha Spain doing psychosocial interventions. We mainly dealt with cases of anxiety and depression associated with forced marriages and high academic demands. That experience helped me realize that what I wanted was to be able to create bonds and help people who are suffering, regardless of whether I was doing it in a refugee camp or in a clinic.

Some time later I started working at the Albolote Penitentiary Center as a psychologist in the Mental Health module, attending prisoners with Severe Mental Illness (SMI) and intellectual disability. After several months listening to their stories in group and individual therapies and, of course, in the courtyard of the module, my conviction that all human behavior is explainable was reinforced. I was fortunate to be able to see how helping someone understand why they behave the way they do is much more therapeutic and humane than simply giving someone a diagnosis or a label and labeling them as criminal or crazy.

I reckon that our profession is one in which one never stops learning and that demands a high level of commitment in order to provide quality psychological care. That is why I continue to deepen in Ipitia’s unique methodology for the treatment of OCD and other tools such as Functional Behavioral Analysis.

I currently divide my time between working in the clinic, continuing my training and my passion for the mountains and especially climbing. For me it is essential to take moments every day, and days every week, to be able to dedicate myself to those hobbies that make me feel fulfilled.