The Galatea Foundation was created in 2001 by the Consell de Col.legis de Metges de Catalunya (Catalan Medical Association) with the aim of promoting health, physical and mental wellbeing and quality of life for the medical fraternity, and by extension, for all health professionals, thereby giving a greater guarantee of health of the population they are consulted by.

It is a well-known paradox that professionals in medicine do not look after their own health as well as they advise their patients to do. It is a profession with a strong social commitment but which is more and more submitted to great pressure of all kinds. This can lead to alterations in the state of mind and the psycho-emotional balance of these professionals, when these elements are basic to them being able to help their patients effectively.

There is a series of factors which strongly affects the professional practice of physicians: the long period of intensive training they need to follow, when they undergo a lot of stress; the need of constant and quick retraining and updating; the growing demand for better healthcare services on the part of users, who are becoming better informed and aware of their rights; a growing complexity of healthcare organizations. These factors and others bring more demands on these professionals so that many of them suffer from physical and mental exhaustion, as well as other psychological and psychosomatic problems. In these situations, professionals do not always look for, or find the necessary help to be able to carry on working with full use of their faculties.

It is therefore with this noble aim of helping health professionals that the patrons of the Galatea Foundation assume the firm commitment of service, which in the long term will be to the benefit of society in general.