A quick look back at the Amsterdam conference to congratulate our third winner of the poster contest organised by EACLIPT, Daina Kosīte, M.Sc., for her poster entitled "The perspectives of local mental health experts on social determinants of mental health and municipality-level policies addressing mental health in 5 European cities" Daina Kosīte is a Junior Researcher / PhD candidate at the Erasmus MC, University Medical Center Rotterdam in Netherlands.
Daina did an impressive poster about the perspectives of mental health experts on the urban policies for mental health. Mental health is shaped by the social, economic and physical environments. Since there is more and more people around the world live in urban environments, it is urgent to look for effective urban policies for mental health and understand the perspective of the main stakeholders about the key challenges and solutions. Daina and her colleagues did an international study with semi-structured interviews with local mental health experts in five European cities. The analysis of the interviews shows that the mental health of city residents is affected by factors like an accumulation of environmental stressors, an intertwinement of socio-economic problems and mental health problems, a bleak outlook due to global crises or insufficient services. The vision of how social determinants of mental health are tackled within the local-level policy shows a focus on the burning issues, a lack of funding to address future problems, or a difficulty in reaching services.
We hope those results will help in supporting the need of implementing local-level urban policy that address the key challenges of mental health in urban environments and use integrated policy approaches to mental health.
You can also go check on Twitter the Department of Daina, the Department of Public Health at Erasmus MC as well as her supervisors, Frank van Lenthe and Mariëlle Beenackers.
Finally you can check the Junior Researcher Programme in which the research project was done as a part of this programme.
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