Editorial

Citation

Caan, W. (2014), "Editorial", Journal of Public Mental Health, Vol. 13 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/JPMH-10-2013-0068

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Public Mental Health, Volume 13, Issue 1.

I spent World Mental Health Day with 21 other people at a transnational meeting on the “Camille” training programme for Empowerment of Children and Adolescents of Mentally Ill Parents (supported by European Daphne III funding until 2013). The Journal of Public Mental Health is a stakeholder in the Who Cares? initiative for young carers who look after a parent with mental illness, and so I was keen to see what ideas were developing around Europe. The Norwegian organisers invited me because of my research on the impact of alcohol on families (Caan, 2013). Two national projects discussed impressed me deeply. Research in Germany found that five to six million young people aged under 20 years have a parent with alcohol problems. The initiative Trampolin (www.projekt-trampolin.de) aims to engage young Germans feeling “isolated, devalued and lonely among peers” or “neglected and unwanted by parents” and makes imaginative use of supporters like the popular Stuttgart footballer known as Cacau. In Scotland the Kitbag for Families (www.internationalfuturesforum.com/kitbag-for-families) makes good use of play and mutual communication across the generations. Across Europe, combatting widespread Stigma associated with either an individual's mental illness or caring for relatives who are ill was a major issue for Camille training.

Sadly, just before World Mental Health Day the UK's best-selling newspaper (The Sun) displayed its prejudice with an “Exclusive investigation” into the “Shock 10-year toll” emblazoned in blood red across its front page as “1200 Killed by Mental Patients” (Parry and Moyes, 2013). The Sun filled two more pages with pictures of 11 persons killed by danger patients’. At a global level, Stigma destroys many lives, for example recent work on over 20,000 young people in South Africa (Shilubane et al., 2013) found that feelings of sadness and hopelessness combined with experiences of victimisation or violence are strong predictors of suicide. Where people like the indigenous Guarani of Brazil are not only socially excluded, but uprooted and forced to live in a hostile, violent environment, the suicide rate rockets up: 34 times the national average for Brazil (Watts, 2013). Even within the health professions there is an urgent need for more effective Anti-Stigma training for our own students (Friedrich et al., 2013).

Getting professional training right could make prevention of mental illness much more effective, for example among socially excluded young people (Caan, 2011a). The UK's Royal College of Nursing has just prepared online learning materials for Public Health Nurses working with young people, if their role as a carer leaves them “struggling to keep up at school” and makes them vulnerable to “depression, stress and low self-esteem, sleeping and eating problems and self-harm” (Royal College of Nursing, 2013).

The UK government has hosted its first international body image conference (a Department for Culture, Media and Sport event in London). In advance of this meeting, Burrowes (2013) prepared a rapid evidence assessment that suggests consequences of a negative body image include low self-esteem, depression and the use of unhealthy weight control behaviours (such as crash dieting).

Areas where the UK is doing badly compared to other nations are the literacy and numeracy skills of its young people. In the population aged 16-24 years, the UK has the worst skills in Europe and average literacy and numeracy are much poorer than Japan or South Korea (Adams, 2013). Educational inequalities among British schoolchildren are striking (Caan, 2011b). Education is a major social determinant of the inequalities in mental health (Mental Health Foundation, 2013) and achieving positive mental wellbeing in the UK population will require a focus on just such structural factors.

Learning curve at the Sun

I must confess
The Gutter Press
Looks like an utter mess.

Its emotional literacy
Looks close to piracy:
Linking “Fear” with “Lunacy”.
Shock! Old Editors can learn new tricks?
If textbooks teach better than bricks
Then Stigma is something we can fix.

Woody Caan

References

Adams, R. (2013), “Poverty and inequality blamed as UK sinks in adult literacy league”, The Guardian Education, London, 9 October, pp. 6-7
Burrowes, N. (2013), Body Image – A Rapid Evidence Assessment of The Literature, Government Equalities Office, London
Caan, W. (2011a), “Preventive psychiatry within public health”, British Journal of Psychiatry, Vol. 199 No. 4, pp. 340-1
Caan, W. (2011b), “How family friendly is the UK?”, BMJ, Vol. 343 No. 7819, pp. 331-2
Caan, W. (2013), “Alcohol and the family”, Contemporary Social Science, Vol. 8 No. 1, pp. 8-17
Friedrich, B., Evans-Lacko, S., London, J., Rhydderch, D., Hendeson, C. and Thornicroft, G. (2013), “Anti-stigma training for medical students: the education not discrimination project”, British Journal of Psychiatry, Vol. 202 No. S55, pp. s89-s94
Mental Health Foundation (2013), “Mental health and inequalities briefing paper”, available at: www.mentalhealth.org.uk/content/assets/PDF/publications/starting-today-background-paper-3.pdf (accessed 22 January 2014)
Parry, R. and Moyes, S. (2013), “1,200 killed by mental patients”, The Sun, London, 7 October, pp. 1, 6, 7
Shilubane, H.N., Ruiter, R.A.C., van den Borne, B., Sewpaul, R., James, S. and Reddy, P.S. (2013), “Suicide and related health risk behaviours among school learners in South Africa: results from the 2002 and 2008 national youth risk behaviour surveys”, BMC Public Health, Vol. 13, p. 926, doi10.1186/1471-2458-13-926
Royal College of Nursing (2013), “The school and community nurses supporting young carers online learning resource”, available at: http://rcnlearning.org.uk/cms/young-carers/ (accessed 22 January 2014)
Watts, J. (2013), “Silent genocide’ fear over Guarani suicides”, The Guardian International, London, 11 October, p. 30

News and views

Cochrane UK & Ireland Annual Symposium 2014:

Cochrane Evidence: Useful, Usable & Used, 23-24 April 2014, Manchester.

This symposium will be held in the Reynolds Building of Manchester University.

Web site http://ukcc.cochrane.org/annual-symposium%E2%88%922014

Workplace health Annual Conference:

Health & Wellbeing at Work 2014, 4-5 March 2014, Birmingham.

This conference will be held at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham.

Web site http://sterlingevents.co.uk/about-hw.html

Inquiry Report from the Mental Health Foundation:

Starting Today: the future of mental health services.

In this report its Theme 6 is Public Mental Health.

www.mentalhealth.org.uk/content/assets/PDF/publications/starting-today.pdf?view=Standard