Our new Mental Well-being Impact Assessment Toolkit is here

New edition of the Mental Well-being Impact Assessment Toolkit

The new edition of the Mental Well-being Impact Assessment (MWIA) toolkit has just been published by the National Mental Health Development Unit in partnership with the National MWIA Collaborative. Improving population mental health and well-being will be a key theme in the Government's forthcoming Mental Health Strategy and the Public Health White Paper.

The toolkit helps support national, regional and local services and systems across health, local government, the voluntary, community and private sector to embed mental well-being into their work. This version builds on the earlier Toolkit published in 2007.

We are proud to have been at the forefront of the development of Mental Well-being Impact Assessment since its inception in 2004. We first developed and piloted MWIA in partnership with the Lewisham Neighbourhood Renewal Fund and Inukshuk Consultancy. Six years on, we are now members of the National MWIA Collaborative and work with a number of regional and national organisations to promote the use of MWIA in a wide range of policies and programmes.

MWIA has become recognised as an example of best practice in improving population mental health in recent health policy. We have now joined forces with Inukshuk Consultancy in a formal partnership to promote the use of MWIA across the regions of England with funding from the National Mental Health Development Unit.

What is Mental Well-being Impact Assessment (MWIA)?

MWIA provides a structured, evidence based analysis of how policies, proposals, programmes and projects might impact on mental well-being

It focuses on mental well-being and identifies factors that are having, or have the potential to have, a negative or positive impact on mental well-being.

Once identified, actions and indicators are developed to maximise the positive, minimise negative impacts and provide ways to measure impacts going forward.

Mental Well-being Impact Assessment is rooted in Health Impact Assessment methodology and exists to build healthy public policy

With ever increasing policy emphasis on well-being, this MWIA toolkit provides an ideal methodology for supporting systems, organisations and programmes to improve and evidence their impact on  well-being

Download the MWIA Toolkit here

National Mental Health Development Unit is supporting the dissemination of the toolkit and adoption of best practice in MWIA through a national capacity building programme in 2010/11. Details of the programme can be found at www.nmhdu.org.uk

For more information about MWIA please contact Nerys.Edmonds@slam.nhs.uk.

Tel: 020 3228 1698

You can also download a wide range of MWIA reports from www.hiagateway.org.uk