Mental disorder accounts for at least a quarter of UK disease burden. Effective interventions exist to treat mental disorder, prevent associated impacts, prevent mental disorder, and promote mental wellbeing and resilience. However, only a minority of those with mental disorder in the UK receive treatment, far fewer receive interventions to prevent associated impacts while there is negligible provision of interventions to prevent mental disorder or promote mental wellbeing/resilience. Implementation of public mental health interventions is far less in low- and middle-income countries. The implementation gap results in population scale preventable suffering, broad impacts and breaches the right to health. The Royal College of Psychiatrists has set up a new Public Mental Health Implementation Centre to address the public mental health implementation gap in order to sustainably reduce impact of mental disorder, promote mental wellbeing/resilience and support achievement of the UN target of universal coverage by 2030. This Centre’s work involves a population approach to improve implementation and coverage of evidence-based public mental health interventions including for groups at higher risk of mental disorder in order to prevent widening of inequalities.
Chair: Dr Trudi Seneviratne, Registrar, Royal College of Psychiatrists and Consultant Adult and Perinatal Psychiatrist, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust
Making public mental health central to the College’s work - Dr Adrian James, President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and Consultant Psychiatrist
Public mental health: an agenda for action by the World Psychiatric Association - Dr Afzal Javed, President of the World Psychiatric Association
The importance of public mental health: a lived experience perspective - Sian Ogle, Patient Representative, Public Mental Health Implementation Centre, Royal College of Psychiatrists
Public mental health: the case for action and the RCPsych’s Public Mental Health Implementation Centre - Dr Jonathan Campion, Director for Public Mental Health and Consultant Psychiatrist, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, Joint Clinical and Strategic Clinical Director, RCPsych Public Mental Health Implementation Centre, Chair of the Public Mental Health Working Group, World Psychiatric Association
