MENTAL HEALTH AND EDUCATION: EXPERT OPINION BY Zsuzsanna Szilvasy (Hungary)
MENTAL HEALTH AND EDUCATION: PERSONAL EXPERT OPINION BY Zsuzsanna Szilvasy (Hungary)
“I do believe in education. The education is meant to take us to the future. I also believe in the extraordinary capacity that children have. All of them! With or without Mental Health Issues. We need to radically rethink our view of intelligence. Every child has strengths, even the most affected ones with Mental Disorders. We have to focus on that, in the aim of help them to achieve their full capacity.
Albert Einstein said: “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” We have to transform the forms and methods of education to the child. I deeply believe that every child can increase and develop, we just have to find the right way to educate them.”
Ms. Zsuzsanna Szilvasy is President of the Autism Europe (Hungary).
Ms. Zsuzsanna Szilvasy have graduated at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, she get an MA degree in civil engineering. She has two children; Márton (1993), Mihály (1997).
Her professional life in the field of autism has started after receiving the diagnosis of her second child. First, she started working as a volunteer for the Hungarian Autistic Society and later she has been elected as its president. During her presidency, the Society has conducted a National Autism Research, and the results of that led to a National Autism Strategy which was adopted by the Hungarian State in 2008.
In 2008, she has been elected the vice president and in 2012 the president of Autism Europe, the lobbying and advocacy organisation representing all the European persons with autism in the European bodies. During her presidency, the EU parliament adopted a recommendation on Autism.
