Addressing industry factors which contribute to poor mental health

An effective mental health strategy for your workplace means not only raising awareness but also developing skills and tools to implement a mentally healthy working environment for all at every level.

This means including training to address industry-specific factors which contribute to poor mental health, specific training for managers, better understanding of how mental health and related training works and its benefits, including the need for follow-on support and the integration of mental health training into other existing training and development programmes.

Mental health training raises awareness that everyone has mental health and highlights the issues of having poor mental health. This is important for everyone to understand on a personal level as well as across a team and those they manage.

Within accredited mental health training frameworks there is limited scope to deliver bespoke courses for an industry. Therefore, the training doesn’t tend to identify or address industry-specific factors which contribute to poor mental health in film and TV.

By understanding what these contributing factors are, how they directly impact an individual’s mental health and how you might address and mitigate against these factors, you can develop practical tools to benefit yourselves and others with better mental health. It is therefore important to include relevant training courses in mental health training plans.

Here we have identified some of the main factors in our industry working practices and culture which contribute to poor mental health and suggested how training might help to reduce or prevent the ill effects on workers.