World Mental Health Day 2025

Each year on 10 October, we mark World Mental Health Day, a global reminder that mental wellbeing matters for everyone - including organisations, not just individuals. In 2025, the official theme is “Access to Services - Mental Health in Catastrophes and Emergencies”. This focus reminds us that mental health does not pause during crises - and neither can the efforts of organisations to support it.

In this blog, Anna Nova Galeon will explore what this year’s theme means for individuals and workplaces, define key mental health concepts relevant to regulated sectors, and offer practical strategies for compliance, resilience, and workforce wellbeing. She’ll also discuss how tools such as ComplyPlus™ can help organisations integrate mental health into governance and training frameworks - making wellbeing part of daily compliance, not just annual campaigns.

Understanding the theme - Access in catastrophes and emergencies

In highly regulated sectors, such as healthcare, education, social care, finance, and transport, mental health challenges often mirror the complexity of the systems themselves. When crises occur,  from public health emergencies to organisational disruptions, these pressures intensify. To build resilient and compliant workplaces, we must first understand what this year’s theme truly means and how “access to services” becomes a cornerstone of both well-being and governance.

What does “access to services” mean?

“Access to services” refers not just to the existence of mental health support (counselling, therapy, helplines, psychological first aid) but to whether people can use them when needed, especially in high-stress, crisis, or disaster contexts. Barriers may include:

• Geographic isolation or disrupted infrastructure

• Shortages of trained professionals

• Financial or insurance constraints

• Cultural stigma or lack of trust

• Overloaded emergency systems.

Why catastrophes and emergencies?

In crises, whether pandemics, conflicts, natural disasters, or industrial accidents, the risk to mental health increases sharply. Trauma, loss, and disruption can trigger anxiety, depression, PTSD, and burnout. The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that one in five people in crisis-affected areas experience a mental health condition.

The 2025 theme is therefore a call to action: to build systems and workplaces where mental health support is not optional or reactive, but embedded and resilient - ready to function when everything else is under pressure.

Defining key terms for organisations

To respond effectively, leaders and compliance managers must understand several foundational concepts:

• Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) - A layered system of care that spans informal community support to professional therapy and crisis response

• Continuity of access - Ensuring that mental health services remain available during emergencies or transitions

• Resilience - The capacity of individuals and organisations to adapt, recover, and thrive under stress

• Duty of care - The ethical and often legal responsibility to protect employees’ physical and psychological health

• Regulatory compliance - Adherence to workplace health and safety, anti-discrimination, equality, and data protection laws that increasingly include mental well-being obligations.

Why mental health matters in highly regulated organisations

In sectors such as healthcare, education, finance, energy, and transport, mental health is not a “soft” issue; it’s a compliance and performance issue. Below are four key areas where mental well-being directly intersects with regulation, governance, and workforce effectiveness, each highlighting why mental health should be treated as a strategic priority rather than an optional initiative.

1. Regulatory and legal obligations

Across the UK and Europe, employers are legally required to manage psychosocial risks alongside physical ones. Under frameworks like the Health and Safety at Work Act, Equality Act 2010, and Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations, organisations must:

• Identify and mitigate stress, harassment, and workload risks

• Provide reasonable adjustments for those experiencing mental ill-health

• Safeguard confidentiality and data protection

• Train managers to respond appropriately and compassionately.

Failure to meet these standards can lead to legal action, CQC or Ofsted scrutiny, and reputational harm.

2. Operational resilience in crises

In emergencies, employee well-being directly affects the continuity of operations. Stress, fatigue, or trauma can impair judgement and decision-making. Organisations with established well-being protocols, crisis communication systems, and post-incident psychological support recover faster and perform better under pressure.

3. Trust, culture, and retention

Workplaces that prioritise mental health build stronger cultures of trust and inclusion. In highly regulated sectors, where public trust is essential, that culture translates to fewer incidents, improved morale, and greater staff retention.

4. Financial and reputational impact

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) estimates that stress, depression, and anxiety account for over half of all work-related ill health cases in the UK. The resulting absences, turnover, and reduced performance come with real financial costs, but proactive wellbeing programmes consistently yield substantial returns on investment.

Practical steps for regulated organisations

Recognising the importance of mental health is only the first step; translating awareness into action requires structure, consistency, and accountability. For highly regulated organisations, this means embedding mental well-being into every layer of governance and daily operation. Below are the practical steps that can help organisations strengthen their compliance, resilience, and workforce wellbeing frameworks in line with the 2025 theme:

A. Integrate mental health into governance and risk frameworks

Treat mental health as a strategic risk area. Embed it into board-level discussions, internal audits, and compliance dashboards. Conduct psychosocial risk assessments as routinely as you assess fire safety or data security.

B. Build capability and awareness

Train leaders, line managers, and employees in mental health awareness and psychological first aid. Encourage open dialogue and normalise help-seeking. In larger organisations, designate and train mental health first aiders who can offer early support and referrals.

C. Ensure accessibility and continuity

Offer flexible access to support, including face-to-face counselling, digital wellbeing apps, helplines, and peer groups. Redundancy plan: if one channel (e.g. on-site counselling) becomes unavailable, alternatives (e.g. remote or 24/7 helplines) should remain active.

D. Monitor, evaluate, and improve

Use anonymous surveys, utilisation data, and regular feedback to measure engagement and effectiveness. Track trends in sickness absence, incident reporting, and turnover to identify hidden pressures.

E. Tailor interventions to the context

Adapt programs to meet local needs, job roles, and exposure levels. In healthcare or emergency services, for example, staff may face trauma regularly, requiring peer debriefing and structured recovery time. In finance or education, long-term stress may require workload reviews or mindfulness-based interventions.

F. Plan for crises and emergencies

Develop a mental health crisis plan as part of your overall business continuity framework. Identify key roles, communication lines, partner networks, and escalation procedures. Conduct regular simulation exercises that include mental well-being considerations.

Overcoming common barriers

Organisations often face obstacles such as:

• Budget pressures or lack of leadership buy-in

• Persistent stigma around mental health

• Fragmented responsibilities across HR, operations, and compliance teams

• Limited data to justify investment.

To overcome these:

• Frame mental health initiatives as risk mitigation, not perks

• Align them with compliance, ESG, and corporate governance goals

• Share anonymised success stories to demonstrate impact

• Start small - pilot, measure, refine, and scale.

Looking ahead - The evolving mental health landscape

Expectations around workplace mental health are rapidly changing. Globally, regulators are expanding psychosocial safety requirements, ESG frameworks increasingly measure well-being metrics, and employees demand authentic, year-round support.

Emerging trends include:

• Legally binding psychosocial risk regulations (e.g. Australia, EU)

• Greater integration of well-being into ESG and audit reporting

• The use of digital mental health platforms and AI screening tools - balanced with strict privacy and ethical oversight

• Inclusion of mental health in emergency preparedness plans.

The organisations that act now will lead the way in compliance, resilience, and trust.

From awareness to action - Building mental health into compliance

World Mental Health Day 2025 is not only about empathy; it’s about structure, leadership, and accountability. Highly regulated sectors have both the capacity and the duty to model good practice - ensuring that access to mental health support remains strong even when systems are tested.

The key is integration: mental health must move from being a stand-alone HR initiative to a core compliance and governance component. It should be integrated into training, audits, leadership evaluations, and risk frameworks - not just wellbeing campaigns.

Building sustainable mental health compliance with ComplyPlus™

At The Mandatory Training Group, we believe that mental health awareness should evolve into a measurable, sustainable organisational capability.

Our digital compliance ecosystem, ComplyPlus™, is designed to help regulated organisations integrate wellbeing into everyday operations. Through its training, reporting, and monitoring tools, ComplyPlus™ enables organisations to:

• Embed mental health into mandatory training programmes

• Track participation and completion rates for wellbeing modules

• Maintain audit readiness and compliance documentation

• Strengthen staff resilience and safety culture through evidence-based learning.

We at The Mandatory Training Group support your organisation in aligning compliance with care, ensuring that mental health is not just recognised but actively protected in every system, policy, and person.