Mental health day and wellbeing

October 10th is the 23rd World Mental Health Day hosted
by the World Federation for Mental Health.

Mental health is a key determinant of our wellbeing, from adult mental health and employment, child mental health, dementia to the promotion of mental health.

The wellbeing research and data give a good indication of where we can make a difference if we are serious about improving our wellbeing. Enhancing wellbeing is a key intermediate outcome in a preventative approach to policy and leads to other positive outcomes.

From the research and data we can formulate our priorities for improving wellbeing:

1. Mental health. A significant finding is the importance of mental health to improving overall wellbeing, separate to socio-economic status.

 Followed by:

2. Social relationships, social support and communities. Positive social relationships at home and work have a significant impact on our wellbeing. Neighbourhood belonging is particularly low in the UK.

3. Prosperity – Sustainable, stable growth and good work. Money does matter, especially up to a certain point, but has diminishing returns. Most things, including a pay rise, don’t have a sustained impact on wellbeing but being unemployed for more than a year does have a sustained negative impact.

4. Childcare, early years, work life balance. Life-satisfaction, good mental health and wellbeing in adult-life is strongly influenced by the development of strong mental health, social and emotional skills in childhood. UK is lowest on sense of vitality in Europe.

→Mental health is a key priority in improving our wellbeing, and we should support evidence-based approaches and interventions that can add to the evidence.

→Here’s on our patron, Lord Gus O’Donnell on Why we must stop ‘spending on failure’ with mental health.

→The theme of this years WMHD is Dignity in Mental Health.

 “Dignity” is a word that has a number of meanings, none of them precise—but we all recognize dignity when we see it, and more importantly, we recognize the lack of it when it’s absent

→ You can support on Facebook and Twitter and also join Thunderclap to donate your status update on October 10 using #WMHD