About World Mental Health Day
10 October is World Mental Health Day, the annual recurrence of WHO’s campaign to celebrate the advancements in this field and raise awareness of upcoming mental health priorities.
This year’s #WorldMentalHealthDay focuses on “Mental Health at Work”, highlighting the protective factor for mental health played by safe and healthy working environments. Unhealthy contexts are strongly associated with stigmatisation, discrimination, harassment and other poor working conditions, posing significant risks and affecting mental health. This, consequently, can result in an overall decrease in quality of life and work productivity.
Workers’ health and safety must be an urgent priority for governments, employers, and worker unions to improve mental health at work, aiming for a meaningful involvement of all parts. Everyone should have the opportunity to thrive at work and in life: to achieve this, investing efforts and resources in evidence-based approaches is a pressing step to be taken.
SIP’s commitment to better Mental Health policies
Pain and mental health has been one of the main priorities for the Societal Impact of Pain (SIP) Platform in 2023. SIP published, in May 2023, its SIP Joint Statement on Pain and Mental Health, in collaboration with ten different organisations working in the field of pain, pain-related or mental health policies.
On 10 October 2023, experts were invited to share their insights at a European Parliament event entitled, “Pain and Mental Health: A Societal Impact of Pain (SIP) Event”, hosted by MEP Marianne Vind and MEP Tomislav Sokol and attended by representatives from different EU organisations.
Furthermore, SIP engaged with the Rapporteur and Shadow Rapporteurs of the SANT Sub-Committee Report on Mental Health, ensuring to include the recommendation from the Joint Statement in the final Report, ratified at the Plenary session on 11 December 2023.
In 2024, continuing its effort to disseminate useful resources, SIP released an infographic summarising the main takeaways from its 2023 Joint Statement. You can consult it here.
Find more information about World Mental Health Day here.