Fundamental Facts about mental health 2016
From a report by The Mental Health Foundation
The Mental Health Foundation published a comprehensive summary of mental health research in November 2016. It provides a unique handbook of key facts and figures, covering all key areas of mental health. It is intended that this guide can help us answer the question, 'What can we do, both individually and collectively to improve mental health in our society?'.
The guide is structured to reflect the many ways in which mental health is understood.
It begins with an overview of mental health problems and then considers differences in the extent of mental health problems both across the life course (children and adolescents, adults and older adults) and groups who experience inequalities.
They present statistics about population groups that are exposed to greater risk, and that have higher rates of mental health problems and lesser access to opportunities to protect their mental health. A significant body of work now exists that emphasises the need for a life-course approach to understanding and tackling mental and physical health inequalities. Disadvantage starts before birth and accumulates throughout life. Certain population subgroups are at higher risk of mental health problems because of greater exposure and vulnerability to unfavourable social, economic and environmental circumstances, which intersect with factors including gender, ethnicity and disability.
Actions that prevent mental health problems and promote mental health are an essential part of the efforts to improve the health of the UK and to reduce health inequities. Treatment and care data highlights service use and the operation of legislation. To make the case for investment in mental health, they have described the extent of the cost of mental health problems in society today.
Download the report here.
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From a report by The Mental Health Foundation, 16/01/2017