WORLD MENTAL HEALTH DAY

WORLD MENTAL HEALTH DAY 2010
“MENTAL HEALTH AND LONG TERM PHYSICAL ILLNESS”

This year’s World Mental Health Day, Sunday 10th October 2010, has adopted the important theme of promoting well-being by focusing on mental health and long- term physical illness.

‘Many people who have severe mental health problems have poorer health outcomes than the rest of the population and, people who are living with long-term physical conditions have a poorer mental health outcome.
A combination of mental and physical health problems often leads to stigma, discrimination and poor access to health care for both the physical and mental health conditions.
The mind and the body are connected. There is a link between mental and physical health.
There can be no health without mental health and equally there can be no good physical health without mental health’ (MHFM 2008: 5 (3); 127