Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) England CEO, Poppy Jaman, shares her thoughts on World Mental Health Day 2017
World Mental Health Day is a time when the whole mental health community comes together to place a spotlight on a specific aspect of mental health, this year’s focus being workplace wellbeing. Mental health and mental illness is of course not something we should call attention to on just one day of the year and in one particular setting, however the milestone serves as a useful platform for those in the sector to create engaging campaigns and share useful resources.
Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) England’s campaign, for example, involved the promotion of a free-to-download Workplace Wellbeing Toolkit developed in response to the finding of Business in the Community’s Mental Health at Work Report 2017. The toolkit provides a step-by-step strategy for organisations to move towards creating mentally healthy workplaces, and provides a suite of resources to facilitate this. Many others in the sector provided some great resources for workplaces too, including the Mental Health Foundation’s guide to supporting mental health at work and Mind’s tips for staying well at work.
Although not workplace focused, CALM’s #DontBottleItUp campaign, with their ambassador and reality TV star Chris Hughes, caught my eye as a great creative way of highlighting how many young men suppress their emotions – 84% according to the organisation’s research. The launch of L’Eau de Chris had many believing it was a legitimate product launch, until it was revealed that the advert was a stunt and part of a campaign for CALM to call attention to the issue of male suicide.
Stunts like this can often run the risk of trivialising important issues, particularly in mental health, however I feel this campaign parodying a kitsch cologne advert, struck a great balance between attention-grabbing and raising awareness of a serious issue. Not only this, but the celebrity factor did a fantastic job of engaging younger generations; exactly the demographic CALM are looking to communicate with. Chris also added authenticity to the campaign by sharing his own lived experience of mental ill health, and for me, that made it all the more powerful.
MHFA England was involved in five other announcements on the day, highlighting some important issues and exciting new initiatives. For example, we co-launched the Mental Health Media Charter with Natasha Devon and others – a list of seven ‘do’s’ and ‘don’ts’ for media outlets to encourage improved reporting around mental health and mental illness. In line with our efforts in higher education, we also supported Arden University’s launch of Studentline, a 24-hour phoneline staffed by counsellors and GPs to provide emotional, legal, medical and financial advice and assistance to students. In addition to this, we partnered with Nottingham University in their appeal for participants to take part in a study investigating the impact of Mental Health First Aid in the workplace, and with the Healthcare Communications Association to support its new initiative to train its members in MHFA.
Perhaps of most significance to our social mission to raise mental health literacy and train one in ten of the English population, was the government’s announcement that it will be developing a campaign to train one million people in MHFA skills. This online campaign will involve a number of mental health organisations and will ultimately help people to assess their own mental wellbeing and also learn techniques to reduce stress and improve their emotional resilience – all skills learnt on MHFA courses. We’re excited to now begin working with the Department of Health and Public Health England, who will be developing and delivering this campaign, which will launch from autumn 2018.
Rounding off the day, the MHFA England leadership team had the privilege of attending a reception at Buckingham Palace, hosted by their Royal Highnesses, William, Kate and Harry. The event provided an opportunity to celebrate progress within the mental health community in recent years and to call attention to the work still to be done to achieve parity of esteem between mental health and physical health.
With so much happening on World Mental Health Day, I’m aware I’ve only touched on a small number of the fantastic initiatives that took place. However, the sheer number of campaigns and events is testament to the growth of our sector and the impressive share of voice that mental health is achieving in 2017. As I recently highlighted in a letter to The Independent, as well as calls for properly resourced services, these campaigns are a crucial part of supporting culture change around mental illness, ensuring people feel able to come forward to talk about mental health, and if needed, to access the right support at the right time. Needless to say, there’s still much to be done till we achieve parity of esteem – till then, long may our campaigning continue.
To see what we got up to on World Mental Health Day visit our campaign page here.