Improving mental and physical health and wellbeing

Chapters

Our JSNA chapters consider the current and future health and social care needs of specific topics.

You can download the following topic-specific chapters as accessible Word documents:

Resources

Here are some useful links for further information and data related to improving mental and physical health and wellbeing. These resources are from the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) online tool called Fingertips.

  • Mental health, dementia and neurology: offers a broad picture of mental health and dementia
  • Local alcohol profile: provides information to monitor the impact of alcohol on local communities, and monitor the services and initiatives that have been put in place to prevent and reduce the harmful impact of alcohol
  • Physical activity profile: brings together data on physical activity, including walking and cycling, as well as data on related risk factors and conditions such as obesity and diabetes
  • Obesity profile: presents the latest available data to help understand and monitor the patterns and trends in obesity
  • Sexual and reproductive health profile: provides data on a range of topics including teenage pregnancy, abortions, contraception, HIV, sexually transmitted infections and sexual offences
  • Local tobacco control profile: provides a snapshot of the extent of tobacco use, tobacco related harm, and measures being taken to reduce this harm at a local level.

Context

Increasing attention is being paid to not only how long people live, but also how well they live.

Health and wellbeing are influenced by many social, economic, and environmental factors, known as the social determinants of health. These are the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age.

Examples of the social determinants of health include:

  • crime and the perception of crime
  • green spaces around people
  • housing
  • unemployment
  • income level.

There are also important individual-level risk factors which have been identified that affect health and wellbeing. These include:

  • tobacco use
  • harmful use of alcohol and drugs
  • physical inactivity
  • poor diet
  • high levels of stress
  • poor mental wellbeing
  • poor sexual health.

Each of these risk factors is an aspect of ‘lifestyle’, the interaction of personal choice and responses to the social and physical environment. People need to make the right choices, as they have a personal responsibility for their own health. This happens more readily in an environment in which these choices are easy. 

Therefore, improving mental and physical health and wellbeing involves broader changes to the social determinants that influence us all, and specific changes for those with particular needs.