PROMENPOL - Promoting and Protecting Mental Health. Supporting Policy through Integration of Research, Current Approaches and Practice (2007-2009)

Funded by

European Commission's 6^th Framework Programme

Duration

36 months, from January 2007 to December 2009

Summary

The incidence and costs associated with mental distress and ill health are substantial and are expected to rise. There is an equally rapid proliferation of 'solutions' and responses at societal, organisational and individual level. This project sets out to identify useful and practical approaches to the promotion and protection of mental health (MHPP) amongst this wide diversity of theories, models and methods, to form the basis for a systematic multidimensional approach to promoting personal mental health and managing the risk factors that predispose distress and pathology.

Objectives

To develop a multidimensional approach to identifying and classifying effective tools for promoting mental health across the lifespan in the settings of schools, workplaces and older peoples' residential homes;
To identify and re-package tools for mental health promotion and protection within 3 contexts - schools, the workplace and residences for older people;
To produce a systematic and easily navigated knowledge management system populated with useful information, key references and important web links;
To construct a set of three mental health toolkits tailored to the life span stage of target users and predominant context within which they live their lives i.e. school, work and residences for older people;
To organise a series of pilot implementation projects to evaluate and review the knowledge base and toolkits;
To produce a set of multi-sectoral policy principles designed to promote and support more proactive and targeted mental health initiatives in each of the sectors;
To create a sustainable collaboration between the key actors in the project to carry forward the results into the later stages of the project and beyond.

Activities and outcomes

Phase 1 will conceptualise and characterise the field, build an effective dissemination platform and identify the key policy drivers and imperatives for Mental Health at EU and Member State level.

Phase 2 will focus upon the preparation of toolkits, bringing together current good practice, customised to three life stages and three contexts, i.e. school, work and residences for older people, and produce a proposal for a 'cross-sectoral' mental health policy platform.

Phase 3 will promote the implementation of pilot projects to review the practicality and usefulness of the toolkits and, based on feedback from the pilot sites, review and revise the instruments and promote a consensus policy platform on mental health within the EU.