Mental Health Expert Interview with Simon Blake CEO of Mental Health England by Darren A. Smith MBM Today's podcast features mental health questions and answers by our expert Simon Blake. Here's a quick overview of the questions: What is the definition of mental health? How has Covid-19 affected mental health? How accurately is mental health reported in the media? How does mental health affect physical health? How does mental health affect your life? Why is mental health important? - Why is mental health training important? Why is mental health on the rise? Please tell us about mental health month/week. When is mental health too much? What does mental health mean to you? Where can someone get a mental health diagnosis? You Can Read the Full Transcript on Mental Health Questions and Answers Below: Darren Smith: Welcome to Sticky Interviews. My name is Darren Smith, and I'm the Chief Executive Officer of MBM Making Business Matter, the Home of Sticky Learning. We are the soft skills training provider to retailers and manufacturers around the globe. The idea of these interviews is to bring to you the expert's inside knowledge of how you can be the very best version of you. Welcome to the show. Welcome Simon Blake. We are here at Sticky Learning, MBM, and we have the great honour of talking to you. Now, I know that you are the CEO of Mental Health England. I know that you ride horses and you've got a competition tomorrow. But what I'd like to do is, for the guys that are watching is say, why should we talk to you about mental health? Simon Blake: Simon Blake, on Mental Health Questions and Answers   So, I mean, the first thing, of course is that everybody should be talking about mental health and talking about mental health properly and seriously. So great to be here talking with you. But I am Chief Executive of Mental Health First Aid England, which is an organisation that wants to train one in 10 of the adult population in mental health first aid England skills and knowledge because we think that will create a cultural tipping point in which enough people have the skills and understanding around mental health to make a real difference. Simon Blake: I also, of course, have lived experience in terms of live with a partner who has their own mental health conditions, friends, family, my own ups and downs in all sorts of things. So, yeah, I have some professional expertise and then some personal expertise. But just go right back to the first bit. We all need to be talking about it, and that's why you should talk to me because hopefully, I encourage some people too [inaudible1:47]. Darren Smith: Fabulous. Alright, we've got about 12 questions. Most of them are those that either come from people on LinkedIn or they are searching for them on Google. So we saw these questions and we thought, who better to ask than you? So we are going to go through these questions, ask you, we might go off a tangent, we might ask you to share a few stories. But for the viewers at home or at work, what we are really trying to do is get all those goodies that are inside your head around mental health out so we can help each other. Simon Blake: Cool. Darren Smith: So our first question is, what is the definition of mental health? Simon Blake: Sure. I mean, the World Health Organisation, I know Donald Trump's not their biggest fan. But the World Health Organisation defines mental health as a state of well-being in which individuals realise their own potential can cope with the normal stresses of everyday life, can work productively and fruitfully, which is obviously a good term for those working in supermarkets and be able to contribute to their own community. So that's the World Health Organisation definition. I guess the key bit in that is this is about well-being. Simon Blake: We often talk about mental health when we mean mental ill health, and it's really important to recognise.