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Welcome to this podcast where we're talking about mental health awareness. According to the latest figures, one in four people in the UK will experience mental health problems each year. However, despite this, mental health is often seen as a taboo subject.
In this podcast we're joined by Michael Boaden of MIND, a leading UK mental health charity, and Dr Adrian Simper, Strategy and Technology Director at the NDA and the executive sponsor for mental health and wellbeing across the NDA group.
A full transcript of the episode follows:

CLARE FULLER


Welcome to this podcast where today we're talking about mental health awareness. According to the latest figures, one in four people in the UK will experience mental health problems each year. However, despite this, mental health is often seen as a taboo subject.
In this podcast we're joined by Michael Boarden of MIND, a leading UK mental health charity, and Dr Adrian Simper, Strategy and Technology Director at the NDA and the executive sponsor for mental health and wellbeing across the NDA group.


 


Thank you both for being here. So, I'd like to start with the first question and perhaps throw it to you, Michael, first. What do we really mean when use the term mental health and what is it you think influences our mental health?


 


 


MICHAEL BOADEN


I think the first and most important thing to say, Clare, is that in the context of mental health, I would always put it alongside and as part of our overall health. So, we don't necessarily need to make distinctions between our physical and our mental health.


 


We need to look at the whole person in terms of the things that affect them. And in the context of mental health, in particular, the main influences will be around, to some degree, how people deal with the ups and downs of life, change.
And ultimately, I suppose, it's about coping strategies and the way that people operate out there in the world. We sometimes measure poor mental health in terms of how people deal with those kinds of things.


 


But it's extremely important that we don't, sort of, ghettoise it, in terms of health, and we look at mental health as part of the overall person in front of us.


 


 


CLARE FULLER


Thanks Michael. Some really interesting thoughts there. Adrian, what's your take on this?


 


 


ADRIAN SIMPER


I think it's quite difficult to separate your mental health from yourself. In some ways that's easier with physical health, we can talk about how our bodies are and how we are. I guess when we ask the question, how are you, we're really asking about people's mental health, not about their physical health.


 


We're saying how are you as a whole person. And mental health is the extent to which you feel okay, as a whole person. And there is, as Michael says, that tie in between your physical health and your mental health, because we all know how your body is performing can affect how your mental health is.
But it's the whole us, isn’t it, I think that's why it's hard to talk about it, because to talk about it you have to separate somehow your mental health from yourself. And that's a strange thing to do.


 


 


CLARE FULLER


Michael, I just wanted to put something to you, generally speaking are we all on some sort of mental health scale, is it safe to say that we all have to deal with something in some form or another?


 


 


MICHAEL BOADEN


Absolutely and I think it's important always to recognise that people's mental health will fluctuate and change. And people are on, what we would call a continuum, so that could involve poor mental health at one end and good mental wellbeing and health at the other end.


 


And people tend to move along that continuum, depending on what's happening in their lives and how they're dealing with things. And I think it's really important, and as we talk about mental health in the workplace, it's really important to recognise that if we're seeing change, that might be

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