The COVID-19 pandemic has worsened the mental health crisis and so this policy is a ‘lockdown-compliant’ measure that aims to counteract the negative impact that the pandemic has had on mental health. This policy involves providing a free online course to citizens on the basics of mental health first aid. This policy is designed to equip citizens with the basic tools to support their friends, family and colleagues with their mental health.
The policy itself is simple: all citizens will be able to access an online course which, once completed, will equip them with knowledge of the basics of mental health first aid. This knowledge can then be used by people to better support relations who are suffering from mental illness. Furthermore, such a scheme will likely generate more conversation surrounding mental health, thus reducing the stigma around mental illness which currently prevents many people from seeking treatment and professional help for their mental illness. The online course would be funded by the government but would be provided by an existing charity that specialises in running mental health first aid courses.
This policy seeks to counteract a significant problem posed by the COVID-19 pandemic: the negative impact on the public’s mental health that the pandemic has had. The policy also capitalises on two behavioural changes that have been caused by the pandemic: an increased willingness to work from home, and an increased willingness by people to volunteer their time for social causes.
The mental health crisis has been compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic, but it is also a long-term issue that will need to be addressed well beyond the end of the pandemic. This policy of a free online mental health first aid course for citizens can be used to combat the mental health crisis in both the short-term (during the pandemic) and in the long-term (after the pandemic has ended). The online-nature of the mental health first aid course will mean that it is a viable policy to be implemented during the pandemic because it does not require in-person contact between those who are participating in the course. This makes it a mental health policy that can be used whilst lockdowns and social distancing policies are in place. The online nature of this policy also means that the variable costs of the policy (the cost of allowing more people to access the course) are negligible, making it a sustainable long-term policy in combating the mental health effects of COVID-19 that will continue beyond the end of the pandemic.
Behavioural changes from the pandemic also suggest that there will be higher take up of this free online course relative to if the policy was introduced before the COVID-19 pandemic. This is because people are more willing to work from home and are more willing to give up their time for volunteering as a result of changing attitudes since March 2020. This suits the free online mental health first aid course because it can be taken from home (say during a lunch break when people are working from home), and it requires people to give up their time for an important social cause (improving public mental health).
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