The mental health team in this service aims to develop strategy and deliver partnership and project work to improve the mental health of people in Manchester.

National surveys show that about one in six of the adult population will be experiencing mental health problems at any one time. For children to the age of 15, this proportion is about one in ten. It is estimated that this prevalence could be doubled for Manchester’s population. This is largely due to the strong links between mental ill health and poverty and deprivation but also because of the city’s role as a regional centre.

To tackle this enormous and complex task, we aim to influence all Manchester organisations to play their part in addition to undertaking direct initiatives to improve mental health. In recent times, this overall enterprise has been referred to as “public mental health”, acknowledging the need to understand the social and economic factors that influence people’s mental health as well as the individual factors.

Mental health is now one of Manchester’s agreed public health priorities.

Manchester Public Health Development Service aims to support people who are working to promote mental health in Manchester through,

• Advice. The service provides informal advice about mental health needs, opportunities and action.
• Training. Training about many aspects of mental health is available through the service training programme Click Here, the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Training Programme and through providing tailored training for individual organisations according to need.
• Providing Resources. The service supplies a range of resources for loan through the Resource Libraries, Click Here. This includes books and journals, training packs, video and audio resources and display materials. We also mount displays, where we can, for public events and locations.