How To Make Societies Thrive Coordinating Approaches To Promote Well Being And Mental Health

This report uses the OECD Well-being Framework to systematically review how people’s economic, social, relational, civic and environmental experiences shape and are, in turn, shaped by their mental health. Based on this evidence, examples of co-benefits, or policy interventions that can jointly improve both mental health and other well-being outcomes, are identified for a range of government departments.

Good mental health is a vital part of people's well-being. This report uses the OECD Well-being Framework to systematically review how people's economic, social, relational, civic and environmental experiences shape and are, in turn, shaped by their mental health. Based on this evidence, examples of co-benefits, or policy interventions that can jointly improve both mental health and other well-being outcomes, are identified for a range of government departments. Implementing and sustaining such co-benefits requires resources, incentives and working arrangements that enable all relevant stakeholders to contribute to tackling the upstream determinants of mental health. Selected mental health initiatives across OECD countries are reviewed to illustrate how policy makers have been realigning action across government agencies; redesigning policy formulation to address the joint factors influencing mental health; refocusing efforts towards the promotion of positive mental health; and reconnecting with societal stakeholders beyond government, including those with lived experience, youth, civil society and research institutions. How to Make Societies Thrive? Coordinating Approaches to Promote Well-being and Mental Health is the second of two reports as part of a broader OECD project on mental health and well-being.

Good mental health is a vital part of people's well-being. This report uses the OECD Well-being Framework to systematically review how people's economic, social, relational, civic and environmental experiences shape and are, in turn, shaped by their mental health. Based on this evidence, examples of co-benefits, or policy interventions that can jointly improve both mental health and other well-being outcomes, are identified for a range of government departments. Implementing and sustaining such co-benefits requires resources, incentives and working arrangements that enable all relevant stakeholders to contribute to tackling the upstream determinants of mental health. Selected mental health initiatives across OECD countries are reviewed to illustrate how policy makers have been realigning action across government agencies; redesigning policy formulation to address the joint factors influencing mental health; refocusing efforts towards the promotion of positive mental health; and reconnecting with societal stakeholders beyond government, including those with lived experience, youth, civil society and research institutions. How to Make Societies Thrive? Coordinating Approaches to Promote Well-being and Mental Health is the second of two reports as part of a broader OECD project on mental health and well-being.

Good mental health is a vital part of people's well-being and essential for individuals and societies to thrive. The recognition that successful mental health strategies need to involve a range of sectors beyond health is not new, yet in practice coalition-building often remains limited and not implemented at scale. This Policy Insights highlights the main findings from the report How to Make Societies Thrive? Coordinating Approaches to Promote Well-being and Mental Health that uses the OECD Well-being Framework to review how people's economic, social, relational, civic and environmental experiences interlink with their mental health, and uses this evidence to identify policies that can jointly improve both mental health and wider well-being outcomes. Selected mental health initiatives across the OECD are also reviewed to illustrate which elements of the policy ecosystem can support collaboration across government and with society more broadly.

The report explores how the built environment (i.e. housing, transport, infrastructure and urban design/land use) interacts with people’s lives and affects their well-being and its sustainability.

Childhood is changing in ways that we are still unpacking, affected by digitalization, globalization and climate change, as well as shocks such as the COVID-19 pandemic. In many OECD education systems, child empowerment is increasingly an explicit aim of policies and practices. But it is often poorly defined, which risks turning it into a mere slogan. With the advancement of children’s rights, children are increasingly being included as stakeholders in decision-making processes. This report gives examples of how children in OECD countries can and do participate in making decisions about issues that affect them. The report examines children's emotional well-being and physical activity, and the role of schools as a physical space to create and support relationships. It also underlines the untapped potential of media education when it comes to seizing opportunities in childhood. Empowering all children to make the most of digital opportunities starts with further narrowing the gap in terms of access to digital tools and the Internet, where inequalities are persistent and pervasive. So, what does child empowerment mean today? Empowered children have the opportunity and ability to act on issues important and relevant to them, can learn by making mistakes, and are key contributors to democracy.

The only book that links psychological wellness with organizational and community health, Promoting Well-Being provides you with important insight into how these domains interact as well as strategies for helping clients harness the benefits of these interactions. It is an essential tool for psychologists, counselors, social workers, human service professionals, public health professionals, and students in these fields.

A compelling argument for improving society's mental health through increased services and better policy Mental illness is a leading cause of suffering in the modern world. In sheer numbers, it afflicts at least 20 percent of people in developed countries. It reduces life expectancy as much as smoking does, accounts for nearly half of all disability claims, is behind half of all worker sick days, and affects educational achievement and income. There are effective tools for alleviating mental illness, but most sufferers remain untreated or undertreated. What should be done to change this? In Thrive, Richard Layard and David Clark argue for fresh policy approaches to how we think about and deal with mental illness, and they explore effective solutions to its miseries and injustices. Layard and Clark show that modern psychological therapies are highly effective and could potentially turn around the lives of millions of people at little or no cost. This is because treating psychological problems generates huge savings on physical health care, as well as massive economic savings through more people working. So psychological therapies would effectively pay for themselves, generating potential savings for nations the world over. Layard and Clark describe how various successful psychological treatments have been developed and explain what works best for whom. They also discuss how mental illness can be prevented through better schools and a better society, and the urgency of doing so. Illustrating why we cannot afford to ignore the issue of mental illness, Thrive opens the door to new options and possibilities for one of the most serious problems facing us today.

The Social Determinants of Mental Health aims to fill the gap that exists in the psychiatric, scholarly, and policy-related literature on the social determinants of mental health: those factors stemming from where we learn, play, live, work, and age that impact our overall mental health and well-being. The editors and an impressive roster of chapter authors from diverse scholarly backgrounds provide detailed information on topics such as discrimination and social exclusion; adverse early life experiences; poor education; unemployment, underemployment, and job insecurity; income inequality, poverty, and neighborhood deprivation; food insecurity; poor housing quality and housing instability; adverse features of the built environment; and poor access to mental health care. This thought-provoking book offers many beneficial features for clinicians and public health professionals: Clinical vignettes are included, designed to make the content accessible to readers who are primarily clinicians and also to demonstrate the practical, individual-level applicability of the subject matter for those who typically work at the public health, population, and/or policy level. Policy implications are discussed throughout, designed to make the content accessible to readers who work primarily at the public health or population level and also to demonstrate the policy relevance of the subject matter for those who typically work at the clinical level. All chapters include five to six key points that focus on the most important content, helping to both prepare the reader with a brief overview of the chapter's main points and reinforce the "take-away" messages afterward. In addition to the main body of the book, which focuses on selected individual social determinants of mental health, the volume includes an in-depth overview that summarizes the editors' and their colleagues' conceptualization, as well as a final chapter coauthored by Dr. David Satcher, 16th Surgeon General of the United States, that serves as a "Call to Action," offering specific actions that can be taken by both clinicians and policymakers to address the social determinants of mental health. The editors have succeeded in the difficult task of balancing the individual/clinical/patient perspective and the population/public health/community point of view, while underscoring the need for both groups to work in a unified way to address the inequities in twenty-first century America. The Social Determinants of Mental Health gives readers the tools to understand and act to improve mental health and reduce risk for mental illnesses for individuals and communities. Students preparing for the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) will also benefit from this book, as the MCAT in 2015 will test applicants' knowledge of social determinants of health. The social determinants of mental health are not distinct from the social determinants of physical health, although they deserve special emphasis given the prevalence and burden of poor mental health.