To request a consultation with a psychologist (psicologo), you will have to get a referral (volante) from your family GP. There are several public mental-health centres (Centres de Salut Mental) in Barcelona as well as psychology units in main public hospitals. Some specialise in child and adolescent mental health. There is also a public network of Centres d'Atenció Psiquiàtrica for adults and children with more acute psychiatric needs. The main private hospitals also have psychology and psychiatric units.

A common complaint of the Spanish mental health establishment (private and public) is its privileging of drugs over psychotherapy. Anti-depressants are all too often doled out for depression, and there is reported unwillingness on behalf of some public GPs to make referrals to psychologists. This, together with the obvious desire to communicate complex feelings (no matter how good your Spanish or Catalan) may prompt you to find an English-speaking therapist or counsellor.

Barcelona NEST (Network of English Speaking Therapists, www.barcelonanest.com) is a group of qualified English-speaking psychologists, psychotherapists and educational specialists who live and practice in the city. They offer a range of advice to adults and children, including dance movement psychotherapy and couple and marriage therapy. They also address child behavioural and adolescence-related problems such as anorexia.

Sometimes foreign residents do experience depression related to culture shock in Barcelona, which comes in different forms and levels of severity. There are those who feel initial euphoria followed by sudden disillusionment, or those who have roundly rejected their own culture, but fail to find what might replace it. Children may feel especially alienated or lost at school. Many of these are generic expat experiences, but Barcelona can also trigger idiosyncratic responses. There is the struggle with not one but two languages; feelings of rejection by the host culture, exacerbated in a city dominated by Catalan national identity; an obsessive tendency to criticise the host culture or, at the other end of the extreme, over identification.