The Sixth World Conference on the Promotion of Mental Health and ...

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Strategy 5: Developing an Effective Workforce for Promotion and Prevention On Friday, November 19 th , Clemens Hosman, Professor of Mental Health Promotion and Prevention of Mental Disorders (the Netherlands), opened the Strategy 5 session by addressing the continuing need for increased infrastructure and workforce development to build capacity for mental health promotion and prevention. Reviewing the historical data of the work in this area from the past 100 years, Prof. Hosman focused on what must be done to move from the concept of promotion and prevention to effective practice “to get our knowledge to the population and to work with the population to support partnerships.” <strong>The</strong>re is no one “road map” to improving capacity, he noted, as there are tremendous gaps in economics and the burden of mental health between countries. According to Prof. Hosman, we must identify and take advantage of opportunities, recognizing how we can collaborate by leveraging what we have and learning from what other countries have developed, particularly through accessible databases of effective programs. In addition, he stressed, we must increase education and training to ensure that successful programs can be implemented and work to ensure that promotion and prevention are part of the global health agenda. Strategy 5 breakout sessions featured two symposia: Building capacity for effective mental health promotion and Right from the Start: Using Pre-Service Education to Build Workforce Capacity in Early Childhood and School Settings. Additional presentations included Developing a workforce of preventionand promotion-minded psychiatrists; Empowering Cambodian women by changing their career pathways: From risk to respectability; NGO strategic efforts to make mental health promotion “tangible”; and Teaching teachers to effectively embed strategies that promote positive social emotional learning into early childhood programs. Poster Sessions In addition to the regular program, poster sessions were scheduled during the day on Wednesday, November 17 and Thursday, November 18. A listing of poster presentations is provided in the program guide available online: http://wmhconf2010.hhd.org/program. Looking Ahead In December, Vijay Ganju, Secretary General and CEO of the <strong>World</strong> Federation for Mental Health (WFMH), sent a letter to conference participants, thanking them “for making the conference a resounding success.” Dr. Ganju referred to “Minister Ramsammy’s inspirational speech on the work that we need to do to make mental health a global priority.” <strong>The</strong> letter included a summary of the pre-conference meeting of mental health global leaders, Mental Health as a Global Priority: An Implementation Strategy, which was held on November 16, 2010. <strong>The</strong> consensus from that meeting was that the mental health “story” needed to be told more effectively: We need to develop and refine the narrative at three levels: the impact on the lives of individuals; the systems-level story of the impact on health and social development, reflecting human rights and social justice perspectives; and the economic impact, underlining the cost-effectiveness and payoffs of investing in mental health interventions. Most urgently, he stated, mental health has to become a priority at the highest levels of health policy. A major step to further this agenda will be to have mental health included in the United Nations Special Session on Non-Communicable Diseases in September of 2011. 10
<strong>The</strong> Seventh <strong>World</strong> <strong>Conference</strong> on the Promotion of Mental Health and the Prevention of Mental and Behavioral Disorders <strong>The</strong> Seventh <strong>World</strong> <strong>Conference</strong> on the Promotion of Mental Health and the Prevention of Mental and Behavioral Disorders will be held in Perth, Australia, October 17-19, 2012. To find out more about this upcoming conference, please visit the conference website: www.perth2012.org. 11
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