Increasing help seeking – Working together creating opportunities for early intervention to support well-being

Our Health Inequalities Report suggests large inequality gaps continue to exist for mental health indicators. Prescription rates for mood and anxiety disorders increased regionally and for most & least deprived areas between 2017 and 2021, with the rate in the most deprived areas 66% higher than in the least deprived areas There is an added concern. It is estimated in the UK, 17% of the general adult population have mental health problems with only 30% seeking any professional help. (McManus, S et.al. 2014). People tend to delay help seeking and problems tend to exacerbate. ‘Perceived need’ and accessibility of support are key barriers to help-seeking. (Brown, J.S.L et. Al, 2022) So what did we do? We took 3 self-help resources, all developed with service user involvement: Using Self Compassion, Bend Don’t Break: low intensity self-help and Building our Children's Developing Brain: aimed at parents to build emotional regulation in their children . An online pilot workshops was delivered in 2022 and 2023 with 203 attendees to explore the potential of this work. What did we find? Evaluations of these workshops told us that 98% of respondents plan to use what they heard to improve their well-being, 99% said they would recommend the workshops to family and colleagues and the most stated way forward was to create on-line media platforms with visual clips of the content of the resources to support the work more effectively. What are we doing now? In partnership with ASCERT from the community and voluntary sector, we have created 3 on-line versions of the 3 interventions to enable people to do the work from these resources. In partnership with the Western Health & Social Care Trust Health Improvement Team psychoeducational workshops took place in September 2023 across Northern Ireland with the aim to engage and motivate the use of these low intensity interventions. Each of these on-line interventions have an evaluation link to gauge qualitative impact. Promotion of these workshops is specifically targeting areas of need and vulnerable groups. To date 5 online psychoeducational workshops have been held with 210 participants. Four more workshops are planned monthly until March 2024. The evaluations to date from these workshops seen consistent with the findings from the pilot. 99% of participants stated that the workshops provided them with tools they can use to support their well-being. 99% of respondents would recommend the workshops to family members and colleagues and the on-line version of the work is appearing the most valued resource that is available through the workshop. This poster will outline the journey of the work to date and impact of making these interventions widely available and accessible across our population. The next step will be to engage with stakeholders and policy makers to consider the impact of these low-cost, accessible interventions and their sustainability in delivery.