New Script for Mental Health Framework Receives MLA Endorsement

The human rights framework is grounded on United Nations and World Health Organisation human rights standards and highlights essential steps that New Script for Mental Health is urging government to take in order to protect and promote people’s right to good mental health. It has been designed to expand and enhance the Public Health Agency’s Take 5 public messaging on health and wellbeing.

Concluding Observations of the recent United Nations International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) Review of the UK 2025 require strengthening of mental health services and support systems by allocating sufficient resources, strengthening community-based support, undertaking initiatives to destigmatise mental health issues and implementing targeted measures for groups disproportionately affected by mental health problems.

These observations underpin the New Script for Mental Health Give 5 Framework and it is anticipated that the Health Minister will integrate this framework into public health messaging, as campaigners will be bringing a motion to the NI Assembly before the summer recess that the Assembly recognises the need for a new conversation about mental health, one that responds to the structural determinants of mental ill-health and trauma.

Alarmingly, antidepressant prescribing has quadrupled in two decades, with a 65% rise among under-18s in the past decade and, following today’s encouraging endorsement from cross party MLAs, Sara Boyce, of Participation and the Practice of Rights, is confident that steps can and will be taken to stop the annual increase in prescribing antidepressants to then reverse the trend.

Sara said: “We have been campaigning long and hard to be heard by those who are making decisions everyday about the mental health of people living in local communities throughout NI.

“At Participation and the Practice of Rights our New Script for Mental Health campaign focuses on the growing global movement to rethink how communities understand and respond to mental distress and trauma.

“Our Give 5 Framework urges the need for transformational change in NI and we welcome the endorsement that this framework has received today from MLAs from all parties.

“I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has endorsed our framework as we continue to build a societal conversation on mental health, led by people with first-hand experience of mental health struggles as well as those working at the coal face of mental health services.”

The five elements of the New Script for Mental Health Give 5 Framework are Connect, Be Active, Take Notice, Keep Learning and Give People dignity.

New Script for Mental Health has already received hundreds of endorsements for the Give 5 Framework including from trade unions, human rights organisations, counselling accreditation bodies, suicide prevention charities, CVS organisations and UNISON, Community Development Health Network, British Counselling and Psychotherapy Society, Rural Community Network, British Psychological Society NI Clinical Division, Cunamh Counselling Derry and Suicide Down to Zero Downpatrick.

Now that the main political parties have endorsed Give 5, you and your organisation can lend your support too by adding your name and company logo to the campaign at: www.nlb.ie/campaigns/mental-health