Work Strand 2 - Mental Health

Supporting people with Mental Health Conditions

What is Mental Health?

Mental health is the successful performance of mental function, resulting in productive activities, fulfilling relationships with other people and the ability to adapt to change and cope with adversity; from early childhood until late life, mental health is the springboard of thinking and communications skills, learning, emotional growth, resilience and self-esteem.       

Mental Health Problems

Mental health problems can be caused by physical, mental or social conditions - or any combination of these.  The majority of people who experience mental health problems can get over them or learn to live with them, especially if they get help early on. Mental health problems are usually defined and classified to enable professionals to refer people for appropriate care and treatment. But some diagnoses are controversial and there is much concern in the mental health field that people are too often treated according to or described by their label. This can have a profound effect on their quality of life. Nevertheless, diagnoses remain the most usual way of dividing and classifying symptoms into groups.

Most mental health symptoms have traditionally been divided into groups called either ‘neurotic' or ‘psychotic' symptoms. ‘Neurotic' covers those symptoms which can be regarded as severe forms of ‘normal' emotional experiences such as depression, anxiety, stress or panic attack. Conditions formerly referred to as "neuroses" are now more frequently called "common mental health problems." Less common are ‘psychotic' symptoms, which interfere with a person's perception of reality, and may include hallucinations such as seeing, hearing, smelling or feeling things that no-one else can.

One in six people will have suffered from a mental health difficulties mostly anxiety, stress or depression.  These affect nearly half of all women and a quarter of men before the age of 70. It is estimated that 30% of GP consultations in the UK are for mental health problems and over time, 30% of employees will have an episode of mental ill health. It is also estimated that:

• In the UK 1 in 4 people will experience some kind of mental health problem in the course of a year
• Mixed anxiety & depression is the most common mental disorder in Britain
• Women are more likely to have been treated for a mental health problem than men
• Depression affects 1 in 5 older people living in the community and 2 in 5 living in care homes
• British men are three times as likely as British women to die by suicide
• The UK has one of the highest rates of self harm in Europe, at 400 per 100,000 population
• Only one in 10 prisoners has no mental disorder

Our Mental Health Well-being Support Programme

In promoting our mental health programme we seek to improve well being and protect people from adverse circumstances. Our effective promotion of mental health is based on a broad understanding of health and needs to encompass a correspondent breadth of co-ordinated interventions for maintaining and enhancing it. As a field of activity, our mental health promotion encompasses strategies, activities and interventions that seek to develop the resilience, resourcefulness and well being of individuals and communities as a means of improving their mental and physical health. It encapsulates a range of activities that seek to improve well being, including general action on the upstream determinants of health as well as specific, targeted health promotion and health-protection measures. These measures include interventions for people in vulnerable groups who are ‘at risk' of mental illness (primary prevention) and interventions aimed at maintaining the good health of individuals who have experienced mental illness, but are currently relatively well (secondary prevention). Recent policy developments have provided a framework through which mental health promotion can be put into practice (Department of Health 2001b, Department of Health 1999a)

It is generally accepted that a combination of protection and risk-reduction measures makes for sound mental health promotion strategies. Protective measures are those that create the conditions for good mental health, such as meaningful employment, good quality, housing and low levels of crime. Risk reduction measures include support for people ‘at risk' in navigating through difficult circumstances


Our organisation's Risk reduction models and  strategies that aim to improve the mental health and well being of a population function at several different levels