Look Back, Look Forward

Well? magazine asked a range of people involved in mental health improvement in Scotland to take a look back over the last six years and talk about their original vision and objectives and what they feel has been achieved.

To assist them in forming their replies, we asked each of our contributors to frame their response with the following questions in mind:

  • Outline what your ‘vision’ was for mental health improvement when you first became involved with the National Programme.
  • To what extent do you feel your original aims and objectives have been achieved?
  • What has inspired you most in this time? And frustrated you most?
  • What is your understanding of ‘a mentally flourishing Scotland’ in relation to your particular area of interest?
  • What do you consider are the three most important actions required at this stage for the future of mental health improvement in Scotland?

Above all, we stressed that we were looking for their own, personal perspective, based on their experiences in-post. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the Scottish Government.

We expected to get a couple of hundred words from each; what we got was far beyond that: a fascinating and at times detailed insight into the many facets of the work currently going on throughout Scotland. It was also far beyond the page constraints of Well? magazine! So, we decided to print an abstract of each response in the magazine, and present the full responses here on WellScotland.info.

You can click through each of the contributors’ articles using the links below.

Linda Dunion, Former Campaign Director for ‘see me’ (2002-2007)

Anne Clarke, Former Director for HeadsUpScotland

Nigel Henderson, Chief Executive for Penumbra

Tony McLaren, National Cooordinator for Breathing Space

Wendy Brock, Former Communications Manager for the National Programme (2005-2008

Jo Kopela, National Development Officer for Scottish Health Promoting Schools Unit

Mary Sparling, Lead Officer for HeadsUpScotland

Allyson McCollum, Chief Executive of Scottish Development Agency for Mental Health

Julie Procter, Chief Officer for greenspace scotland

Simon Bradstreet, Director for Scottish Recovery Network

Dr Jane Parkinson, led on work to establish national adult mental health indicators for Scotland

Caroline Farquhar, Former Head of Implementation for Choose Life (2003-2007)

Suzi Vestri, Acting Campaign Director for ‘see me’

Kate Craik, Formerly National Development Officer for ArtFull (2006-2008).

Dougie Paterson, Programme Manager for Choose Life