Strong Foundations: Why everyone needs good emotional health – and how to achieve it

The UK is facing a serious mental health crisis – every week one in six people in England will experience a common mental health problem, such as depression or anxiety. The knock-on impact of this costs our economy at least £118 billion a year due to factors like lost productivity and economic inactivity.

It’s essential the UK government adopts preventative policies that address the root causes of mental health issues, and help mitigate known risk factors; including an individual’s family environment, workplace, educational setting or neighbourhood.

Supported by The Centre for Emotional Health, this paper builds on previous findings outlined in the preliminary paper, which introduced the concept of emotional health and the role it plays in promoting the foundations of good mental health. This second paper calls for a “prevention revolution” that’s rooted in putting good emotional health at the forefront of policy, and sets out seven key recommendations for how the UK Government can achieve good emotional health for all.

This project is part of Demos’s ‘prevention in practice’ series, which is a series of policy papers outlining how we can bring about a preventative state across different policy areas.