Oxfordshire's Programme to promote Mental Well-Being

What is mental well-being?

Good mental well-being is feeling positive, satisfied, realising your abilities, being productive, able to cope with daily stresses and survive difficult situations.

Mental well-being is affected by many things. Positive influences include physical health and a stable home life; negative influences include unemployment and poor housing.

Why is mental well-being important?

Poor mental well-being can lead to problems like depression and anxiety.

· One in four of us will experience mental ill health this year
· Mental health problems take up a third of GPs’ time and cost the UK £77 billion a year
· Unhappy people are 1.5 times more likely to have heart disease

If we improve mental well-being we can help to prevent ill health, reduce inequalities, lower the impact on health services and save money.

Developing the mental well-being improvement strategy

Mental well-being is a new priority action area for health improvement. In his Annual Report 11 (2008) the Director of Public Health requested a strategy to improve mental well-being in Oxfordshire be developed, and the Health and Well-Being Partnership has since made mental well-being a strategic priority.

The strategy Improving Mental Well-Being in Oxfordshire 2009-2012 was developed following a thorough mental well-being needs assessment. This included a survey ‘What Makes you Feel Good?’, which was completed by more than 700 members of the public, and a workshop which was attended by more than 70 stakeholders.

How will we improve mental well-being?

The key actions in Improving Mental Well-Being in Oxfordshire 2009-2012 are:

Year one: 2009 to 2010
· Train key professionals Mental Health First Aid
· Develop mental well-being self-help book collections in libraries
· Run a campaign on how to improve your own mental well-being.

Year two: 2010 to 2011
· Create mentally healthy work environments.
· Provide self-help books on prescription.
· Run a campaign to challenge stigma towards people with mental health problems

Year three: 2011 to 2012
· Improve support for families experiencing relationship breakdown.
· Develop a men’s mental well-being programme.
· Ensure mental health is covered in Disability Discrimination training.

More information

For more information on mental well-being in Oxfordshire contact beckyhitch@oxfordshirepct.nhs.uk

You can download the following documents here:
· Improving Mental Well-Being in Oxfordshire 2009-2012
· Mental Well-Being Needs Assessment 2008
· What Makes You Feel Good? Survey on Mental Well-Being in Oxfordshire. Report of Public Engagement 2008
· Report of the Mental Well-Being Stakeholder Workshop, October 2008

Mental well-being needs assessment 2008 - final

Mental well-being strategy and action plan 2009-2012 - final

MWB workshop report - final

MWB survey report - final v9