Mental Health Framework

Yesterday Nick Clegg announced the publication of the mental health framework, this paper sets out actions and measures to better manage and monitor health. A follow up to the previous No Health Without Mental Heath we can at last see some real activity in the world of mental health. It's surprisingly simple in its recommendations but nevertheless powerful. The paper recognises the overall lack of consistent measurable mental health management in health and social care and seeks to address the shortfalls across health commissioning, management and delivery.

Whilst it recommends that GP's need more awareness of treatments available and offer choice to patients it goes on recommend greater training in mental health.

The creation of mental health champions at local authority level is a welcome move and puts mental health onto the visible agenda, and together with mental health experts on CCG's and greater involvement of national charities should mean mental health gets a better deal.

It is good to see the recognition of employers in greater education and treatment, it was disappointing to note the presence of occupational health and the absence of EAP's, an area that Dame Carol Black did identify as useful.

Stigma was respectfully addresses with employers too having a role in the reduction of stigma through awareness training. They ate encourage to become mentally healthy workplaces and to join the Time to Change campaign.

The publication of a mental health dashboard will be a challenge but helpful.

This appears to be a big step forward, and the implementation is being closely watched by interest groups.

Employee Assistance in Europe

Recently I attended the EAEF conference in Athens, actually I am on the board of this organisation. This year we were in Athens, which seemed like a good idea when we planned the event a year ago. Who would know that the global financial crisis would result in Greece experiencing such problems. I guess its a lot like our EA work, people are going along fine and suddenly things change and its difficult to cope. People were warning against going to Greece, it would be difficult, the country is broke and it may be dangerous. This too reminds me of EA work where rumour persists about someone and why we shouldn't bother. It turned out that Greece was lovely, the people were just lovely and life was going on despite the turmoil in the country. We should never pre judge a situation.

The conference was very positive and EA is growing in experience across Europe, this year representatives from Latvia attended and I hope we can see them again. The sessions were varied and engaging, with technology playing a major role through tweeting, LinkedIn and webinars.

If you have not been to an EAEF conference then you should, its great fun, the social events are always fantastic and the interactions with more than 20 nations interested in EA work is inspiring.

I did a session on the methodological flaws in the calculation of ROI, it was quite a debate, stimulating and fun.