HELPS Project Description

This project aims at the development of a framework of empowerment focusing on the promotion of healthy living conditions in psychiatric care Institutions and on the improvement of the physical health status of institutional residents with mental illness in the European Region. The empowerment aspect in this project is expressed by its potential to increase staff members’ and residents’ control over and their responsibility for individual physical health and health relevant characteristics of their working and/or living environments. On the basis of this project staff members and residents of mental health care Institutions should be enabled: to identify routinely the most relevant physical health problems, to detect adverse (and protective) health relevant lifestyles, and to discover health relevant institutional characteristics; to choose and implement suitable health promoting strategies at the individual, the organisational and the environmental level; and to continuously evaluate the effects of such interventions.

For the purpose of achieving these aims: a set of standardized assessment instruments will be developed, effective and cost-effective intervention strategies and examples of good practice in the field of nutrition, physical exercise, oral health care, smoking cessation and alcohol and drug prevention will be identified, and basic methods and tools of health care evaluation will be put together in a format readily applicable under conditions of routine care. The project will develop, as its principal output, a toolkit on physical health promotion in mental health care settings which is suitable for application in a wide range of mental health care Institutions across Europe. To allow easy access the toolkit will be disseminated via the internet and as CD ROM. For dissemination beyond the participating countries a standardised translation procedure will be provided which facilitates adaptation to further languages.

It is expected that the health promotion toolkit will be perceived by staff members and residents of mental health care Institutions as an opportunity to increase control over their quality of life. A widespread use of the toolkit is expected to have a significant positive effect on the physical health status of people with mental illness. In addition, dissemination of the toolkit could become one element of a European database on living conditions in mental health care Institutions. In summary, these effects will constitute an important contribution to maintaining and enhancing the dignity, human rights and general health among residents of mental health care Institutions.