Ms Kate O'Flaherty:

In terms of developing the positive mental health promotion plan, I know there is an interchange of words. We are talking about mental well-being and positive mental health. Counties and communities in which people live are core settings as well as workplaces. Colleges will also be a core setting by virtue of the significant number of our young people who are in further education.

Programmes and initiatives must be evidence-based and consistent in terms of people developing their own skills and resilience. There is a continuum over how one protects and maintains one’s mental health well-being into where there is a need for early intervention. For example, under the suicide prevention strategy, there are programmes, like SafeTALK, ASIST, applied suicide intervention skills training and Mental Health First Aid, which is part of the training of teachers, youth workers and others who are in contact with young people. An important feature of this training is a person being aware of, being in touch and comfortable with their own skills in terms of their own mental well-being. The widespread application of a skill set would be helpful not only in protecting one’s own mental health but being able to intervene as part of one’s professional role, one’s role in a community or as a good adult to young people. It is certainly something we will be looking at.