Better Together: How to Support the Proactive Mental Health of Family, Friends and Coworkers

At the current rate, nearly 50 percent of us will experience mental illness during our lifetimes. Fortunately, we can help friends, family, and coworkers to adopt proactive mental health attitudes and behaviors that reduce the chances of being afflicted with anxiety, depression, substance abuse, bipolar affective disorder, dissociation, obsessive-compulsive disorder, paranoia, post-traumatic stress disorder, psychosis, and schizophrenia. We must proactively support mental health by helping our peers adopt practices that lower the risks and speed recovery from mental illness. Just as importantly, we need to support our peers' proactive mental health so they can enjoy happier, healthier, and more productive lives. Better Together provides a step-by-step approach, solid advice, case stories, checklists, and revealing self-tests that take the guesswork out of supporting the proactive mental health of family, friends and coworkers.

Better Together guides your efforts to...

- Lay a solid foundation for effective peer support.

- Get the key facts needed for setting proactive mental health goals.

- Locate excellent role models.

- Eliminate barriers to change.

- Find or create supportive environments.

- Avoid setbacks or work through them.

- Celebrate progress and success.

The proactive mental health approach was first introduced in We Flourish, a management guidebook about creating supportive work cultures. Dr. Judd Allen developed the Better Together approach to peer support for Union Pacific Railroad and it is now available in hundreds of businesses, schools, and communities worldwide.