Earlier this year the World Health Organization (WHO) released The Social Determinants of Mental Health, which outlines the connections between social factors and mental disorders, and describes how taking a lifespan approach to addressing inequality is the best strategy to impact mental health and well-being. The authors have this to say about the connections between a healthy mind and a healthy body: The social determinants of health shape and profoundly influence both mental and physical health. Furthermore, the relationship between physical and mental health indicates that poor physical health can cause mental disorders, and vice versa. Reducing inequalities in mental health cannot be achieved without reducing inequalities in physical health. Therefore, a social determinants of health approach should consider both mental and physical health implications within all actions to tackle health inequalities. This is common sense: The relationship between mental and physical health has been described by researchers and validated by people’s real-life experience. But as an HIA practitioner, how do you address both at the same time? You only have to start to outline a scoping pathway to see the difficulty in considering both mental and physical health impacts of an action at the same time. For example, a... Read More >>
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