Nigel Henderson
Chief Executive
Policy advocacy is a big part of Penumbra’s work in being a part of the public conversation around mental health and with the Scottish Parliament elections just around the corner, we’ve partnered up with some key players in Scotland’s mental health sector to form the Scottish Mental Health Partnership. Ahead of polling day, read our joint manifesto, the #3Ps the Scottish Mental Health Partnership Manifesto 2021: promote, prevent, provide.
Early intervention, person centred care planning and peer support must be key, every time for every person.
Promote:
Deliver an ambitious public health programme to promote good mental health and wellbeing for the whole population. This should include developing community supports, using asset-based approaches to adopt and maintain healthy lifestyles, raising health literacy and creating the environmental and social conditions that will allow wellbeing to thrive.
Prevent:
Identify and target specific actions to tackle key risk factors across all policy areas for communities and populations at higher risk of mental ill health and distress, such as inequalities groups. This includes reducing economic insecurity, educational disadvantage and unequal access to the natural environment. Prevention must also include sustaining and expanding self management and peer support initiatives. This will enable those with lived experience of mental ill heath and distress to maintain their recoveries and reduce risk of relapse.
Provide:
Make a full range of flexible, recovery focused support and treatment options available to meet the individual needs of those who experience mental ill health and distress. This should include innovative specialist crisis services, national distress services, access to sufficient, adequately resourced and locally based inpatient services, and also home and community based alternatives within both statutory and third sector delivery. Early intervention, person centred care planning and peer support must be key, every time for every person.
