Politics

Porto City Hall acts in the field of Mental Health in the workplace

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Porto City Hall provides its staff with training regarding mental health in the workplace. The specific training, themed "Ouvir o que não é dito, Primeiros Socorros em Saúde Mental" [Make the unspoken heard, First Aid in Mental Health - free translation], started today and it will last the entire week, in a total of 18 hours. This initiative is jointly organised with Time to Change Campaign and Mental Health First Aid England.

There are a lot of actions and initiatives that organizations can set up in order to promote mental health debate and improve the staff's well-being, thus directly impacting productivity, both from an individual and systemic perspective.

Councillor for Youth, Sports, Human Resources and Legal Department, Catarina Araújo, highlights that "today is day one of this First Aid Training regarding Mental Health at the workplace, in the framework of what the City hall has established as a prerogative in its Human Resources Management and policies".

In order to combat the taboo and break the stigma of mental health, namely at the workplace, Filipa Palha, clinical psychologist and Programme Coordinator adds that "this training is all about starting to raising people's awareness on this issue and to trigger a deeper thinking on the existing myths and prejudices; only then, will we be able to fill in the suitable information as literacy in the field of mental health is non-existent, to say the least".

"Our aim is to help people on what the first symptoms are and at the same time, to go beyond the silence and some type of intimidating feelings people experience in matters of the sort" Filipa Palha concluded.

This training introduces the principles of knowledge and communication. All the contents addressed during the training are systematised in a book that will be handed-out to the trainees.