Supporting World Mental Health Day 2018

Union Matters October 10 2018

Today is the 26th World Mental Health Day, with this year’s theme being: Young People and Mental Health in a Changing World.

Each year, this important awareness day is run by the World Federation of Mental Health (WFMH) – an international campaigning body founded back in 1948 and with links to the UN.

And the CWU is just one of many organisations supporting the initiative and its campaign aims, which are “to advance, among all people and nations, the prevention of mental and emotional disorders, the proper treatment and care of those with such disorders, and the promotion of mental health.”

As well as actively supporting the excellent work of WFMH, the CWU is also developing our own mental health strategy, following a decision by our annual conference back in April.

Dave Ward, CWU General Secretary said “There is no doubt that the issue of mental health impacts on the general work of the union, our industrial constituency work, how we support all our representatives and how we address these issues in wider society, The CWU will be significantly stepping up our work in this area in the coming months.”

In order to implement the conference resolution, a project team has been set up, under the direction of our general secretary, to develop, implement and monitor the CWU mental health strategy.

“As well as this work at national level, there have also been some great initiatives on tackling mental health issues at local and regional level,” says National Officer Dave Joyce, “and we’re asking branches to feed back to us details and information of their local work on this.”

One of the National Executive representatives, Steve Jones, spoke on this subject at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool last month, in which he spelled out the urgent need for action on mental health.