Mental Health Prevention

Mental health prevention is the strategy of building and developing resilience to life challenges BEFORE mental health problems can develop.

It is widely recognised that prevention is better than cure and whilst the NHS offers a range of preventative services to the public such as screening for Bowel and Breast Cancer, almost nothing is done to prevent mental health problems before they occur.

This may not be so surprising when we consider that many of the known causes of mental health problems are the direct result of social inequalities that are governed by those in positions of power, be those at the legal, legislative, religious, cultural, familial or economic level.

Irradicating these known causes would, of course, require a radical re-structuring of the way our society functions.

Unfortunately, given that many of our current societal systems are geared towards power and wealth, these changes are unlikely to be implemented.

The Known Causes of Mental Health Problems

There are many different factors that can (but not necessarily do) cause mental health distress including:

• Cultural factors
• Social factors
• Environmental factors
• Biological factors
• Individual Psychological factors

However, not everybody who is subjected to these different factors will experience mental distress.

This is because each of us creates our own set of meanings about these different experiences.

These individual meanings are known as subjective understandings and it is these that shape the way we feel, not the experiences themselves.

Causative Factors in More Detail

Cultural Factors

Social Factors

Environmental factors

Biological Factors

Individual Psychological factors

The CORE Programme

The CORE programme was specifically developed to provide the knowledge, tools and practical methodologies that underpin psychological resilience.

Since it is understood that one of the main reasons we might experience mental distress is due to our own subjective meaning making process, the CORE programme directly addresses this aspect of the human experience.

Furthermore, because the meanings we attribute to any given experience are determined by our CORE beliefs, CORE values and CORE strengths, the programme also helps