Editorial

Citation

Caan, W. (2012), "Editorial", Journal of Public Mental Health, Vol. 11 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/jpmh.2012.55611caa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Public Mental Health, Volume 11, Issue 3

As I write this Editorial, events are taking place all around Britain and the Commonwealth to mark the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II. In his tribute to Her Majesty after a concert at Buckingham Palace, the Prince of Wales noted that he was only three years old when his “Mummy” had become Queen. This brought back to me a striking newspaper headline I had seen earlier:

British children’s prospects in life fixed at age of three (Razaq, 2012).

Looking up the source of this report on children’s prospects, it turned out to have been published by the Prince’s Trust, for the All Party Parliamentary Group on Social Mobility (2012). So what can Public Health insights tell us, about improving life chances?

Entrenched inequalities in British society produce widening inequalities in health. The Marmot Review (2010) includes two fundamental recommendations to promote health equality:

1. 1.

   Give every child the best start in life.

2. 2.

   Enable all children, young people and adults to maximise their capabilities and have control over their lives.

In terms of public mental health, parental distress or longer term illness can leave a deep impression on the next generation, and if unaddressed this burden can magnify a child’s poor prospects. While considering England’s separate policies on midwifery, health visiting and primary care therapists, the Department of Health (2012) recently prioritised improved collaborative care for new parents with a focus on “emotional wellbeing”. That does sound like a good start. But it is not just the wellbeing of an individual that enables the population to flourish … policy makers need to understand the wider connections and context for growth.

A stark warning comes from Italy, where multiple groups of “white widows” are organising protest marches, after the suicide of husbands who felt overwhelmed by debt and unemployment (Vogt, 2012). Young single people can also feel overwhelmed and it was the suicide of a fellow student that inspired Tayaba Nicholson to set up Mental Wealth Matters in Manchester University (Smith, 2012). It aims to encourage students to talk comfortably about problems like stress and depression while promoting positive wellbeing through self-care skills and creative projects. That does sound like taking control over their lives.

In this issue, Burke et al. describe a concerted and evidenced initiative in response to an increase in suicides within County Durham. Poverty in childhood is associated with poorer lifelong mental health, and certain life events (exclusion from school or being taken into local authority care) are associated with a higher risk of suicide later on. Evans considers current gaps in the data available to monitor vulnerable children’s health – these gaps must be addressed soon if the new Health and Wellbeing Boards are to become effective guides for local commissioners, about child and family services. To understand and engage with vulnerable groups we also need fresh qualitative perspectives. Here, Newton and Bale offer such qualitative perceptions from public participation. To be proactive in public health we must monitor trends. Roberts et al. demonstrate the value of capacity to profile either deterioration or improvement in levels of distress at the population level, over time. While other population sciences have developed along with needs in public health practice, in this issue Seager makes a strong case for some innovative developments in Public Health Psychology. That insight of Seager contrasts with, say, the fashionable online marketing “Movement” for delivering happiness claimed in the comic book published by Hsieh (2012) with much hype but not much real science. I hope the UK’s emerging Academic Health Science Networks (2012) will really get to grips with the practical implementation of research findings on population wellbeing!

Educational attainment is a key factor in enabling young people to maximise their capabilities. The All Party Parliamentary Group on Social Mobility (2012) calls for a focus on systematic ways of encouraging teachers to help narrow the gap between rich and poor children. Unfortunately, the context in England is one of discouragement amongst teachers, for example in one year, 2008-2009, teacher suicides rose 80 per cent (from 35 to 63 deaths: Knowsley, 2012). When it comes to improve mental health, schoolteachers, schoolchildren and families need to come together in fresh ways. Useful pointers may come from the experience of child psychiatrist Alan Cooklin, drawing on the experiences of schoolchildren surviving alongside a parent with mental illness (Cooklin, 2010). Using an educational model of workshops called Kidstime, Cooklin et al. (2012) developed a multi-family learning intervention that is now in use in several areas of London. This Summer “The Mental Project” became a registered charity to develop a film and computer platform for both teachers and pupils. Its educational focus is “helping children who look after their parents with mental illness” and young people are working alongside carers’ organisations, creative agencies and professional bodies. The Journal of Public Mental Health is one of the partners in this creative project.

Table I Jubilee Checklist

Many events during the Jubilee weekend aimed to involve children and also all generations sharing the same neighbourhood. Instead of a poem in this issue, I am ending with a Checklist (Table I, based on nef’s Five Ways to Wellbeing, available at: www.neweconomics.org).

Woody Caan