What is ISWAN’s Steps To Positive Mental Health and why is it important?
Keeping seafarers safe is not only about avoiding close calls on board anymore, as it is clear that poor mental health takes a serious toll on their work performance. Seafarers face incredible stresses on board, not just when they are working but in their free time, too. Isolation, bullying, and disrupted sleeping patterns are all too common, and that is what the International Seafarers Welfare and Assistance Network (ISWAN) is here to highlight and work to improve.
ISWAN recently produced a self-help guide for seafarers Steps To Positive Mental Health. Overseen by Consultant Clinical Psychologist, Dr Pennie Blackburn, the new self-help guide is a part of ISWAN’s Seafarers’ Health Information Programme (SHIP) and it is intended to be the first in a series of ‘Good Mental Health Guides for Seafarers’.
“The guide is designed to help seafarers deal with every day stresses, worries, and concerns”, explains Caitlin Vaughan, Project Manager at ISWAN.
“We hope that Steps To Positive Mental Health will be one in a series of guides that will help seafarers to develop simple coping strategies to deal with stressful situations or worries on board. An important message we emphasise in the guide is that talking through your problem or managing to connect with others can help you see your solutions more clearly, or generally make you feel better.”
The guide consists of a comprehensive explanation of all the things that might affect the seafarers’ mental health, including their physical health. Amongst the suggestions are tips and exercises designed to help manage stress-inducing thoughts through fact-checking, positive coping statements, and mindfulness.
When asked how challenging the exercises are, Vaughan was confident that they are simple enough to enact without much training.
“The idea was to outline simple and short activities that would not be too daunting for anyone who is already feeling overwhelmed by feelings of sadness or other negative emotions.”
The skills outlined in the guide equip seafarers to deal with tough situations and difficult emotions even outside of work, which makes them invaluable. However, to ensure that the guide gets to all the relevant people, ISWAN is sharing it for free.
“At present our guide is accessible via both of our websites Seafarers' Welfare and Seafarer Help”, says Vaughan.
To spread the word and raise awareness, ISWAN is utilising its impressive global network, increasing the guide’s reach.
“Since we launched the guide on 3 July, we have advertised it on our social media channels”, Vaughan recounts.
“Our Seafarer Help Facebook page has over 360,000 seafarer followers all over the world. In our next correspondence to our members this week, we will be sending them the guide and asking that they share it with their respective networks. We will also be sending it to the 430 seafarer centres we know of around the world so they can inform visiting seafarers about it where possible.”
As they are a charity, ISWAN’s work depends on charitable grants and donations.
“We hope to be able to print and distribute hard copies through our regional workers in the Philippines, India and Nigeria; welfare workers in ports; directly to ships through our members and through medical centres.”
This being the first in a proposed self-help series, ISWAN is working on more guides to release in coming months. Until then, they “will be translating parts of the guide, where appropriate, into Filipino, Russian, Arabic, Hindi and Spanish”.
ISWAN also runs Seafarer Help, a free and confidential service for seafarers who need support or assistance, whether it is dealing with bullying, unpaid wages, or poor working conditions.
“We will continue to strengthen the skills of our multilingual helpline team, who have been trained in emotional support and counselling skills, so they can help any seafarers who require this support.”
Find out more about ISWAN and the amazing work that they do here.
If you are as passionate about seafarers’ welfare as we are, join us at CrewConnect Global, where industry experts come together to discuss the steps to improve crew welfare.