The GHA will be organising a Mental Health Acceptance event at Casemates Square on 10th October, to coincide with International World Mental Health Day. The idea behind the initiative is to put across the message that it is time to prioritise mental health in the workplace while posing the question to the general public: “What are we doing about it?”

The event will bring together numerous other frontline agencies, which discharge different responsibilities and support roles in the field of Mental Health in the community as part of their line of work.

These include the RGP, the HMGoG Wellbeing Team, the Gibraltar Fire & Rescue Service, Unions and local charity groups. Each of them will be setting up a stall at Casemates between noon and 5pm providing information to the public about the inter-agency work that they carry out throughout the year, and also the actions each organisation is undertaking to support the central aim of Mental Health acceptance in the workplace, for instance by having well-being teams that can interact with staff when required.

Within the Gibraltar Government there is TRIM (Trauma Risk Management) that has already been developed as part of a training programme for support workers. Whenever ambulance staff or fire fighters attend a traumatic incident, we are training staff to ensure that assistance is at hand and is provided through preliminary discussions with them about their experience, which may then escalate if necessary to secondary mental health services.

GHA Director General, Kevin McGee, said: “We would like to encourage the public to attend the different stalls on 10th October to see what each service is doing to achieve the aim of securing greater acceptance in the workplace. It is vitally important that we progress from the concept of awareness to one of active acceptance of work colleagues with Mental Health issues.”

The Minister for Health and Care, the Hon Gemma Arias-Vasquez, added: “This initiative is one which the GHA has been working in tandem with other agencies to emphasise that we need to move on from awareness of Mental Health issues to acceptance of what it actually means and how it affects people in the workplace. This is an event for the whole community to get involved and a great opportunity for the public to share the importance of the underlying message.”