Kingston’s Better Mental Health Joint Strategic Needs Assessment 2022

This Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (known as a ‘JSNA’) covers all aspects of mental health (MH) from mental health promotion (sometimes referred to as mental wellbeing), mental illness prevention, and the care and support available for, and required by, those with a mental health problem and/or in recovery. A JSNA aims to assess the current and future health, care and wellbeing needs of the local community to inform local decision making. It is hoped that this Kingston Mental Health JSNA will help inform work in Kingston to develop a mental health prevention work appropriate to our population and to enable us to quantify the benefits of putting interventions in place.

The JSNA has 6 chapters. It begins with a focus on understanding our local population and in particular risk, wellbeing, prevention of ill health and community resilience. These are covered in the Understanding Place and Understanding People sections. After that, the JSNA follows a life course approach that includes sections on perinatal mental health, children and young people, working age adults and older people across our diverse population.

This JSNA was produced by both a literature review and review of the latest published health data, together with stakeholder involvement, and also using the findings of ongoing stakeholder surveys on the topic of Mental Health and Wellbeing. The PHE Model JSNA was used to guide what data 1 should be considered in the process.