Building Mental Resilience in a Changing World

Prof Christos Lionis (Greece)

Chair of the WONCA Working Party on Mental Health

Prof Christopher Dowrick (UK)

Past Chair of the WONCA Working Party on Mental Health

World Family Doctor Day 2025 will highlight the vital role family doctors play in mental wellness, emphasizing the interdependence between doctors' well-being and our ability to care for our patients. Through social media, storytelling, webinars, and collaborative initiatives, WONCA will foster a global movement to celebrate family doctors and promote mental resilience.

WONCA Working Party for Mental Health

The WONCA Working Party of Mental Health aims to empower family doctors and their teams to improve the quality of mental health care for patients and increase patients' access to behavioural health services.

Our activities include:

• Advocacy project: In two innovative pilot programmes, twenty young family doctors from all global regions have come together to learn how to integrate mental/behavioural health care into primary care delivery, to develop skills for practice transformation, and to become advocates for local system change.
• MDD Minds project: Aims to empower primary care professionals to provide effective and accessible care for patients with major depressive disorder. We have successfully trained more than 580 healthcare professionals across multiple regions, implemented innovative capacity-building strategies, and improved the integration of mental health care into primary care systems.
• MHT Project: Aims to support frontline professionals who work in areas affected by wars, conflicts, and natural disasters to cope with stress, build resilience, protect their mental health, and support their daily practice.
• The Music Project: Aims to map experiences worldwide and produce training material, including live events, song composition, and video clips.
• Face-to-Face training collaborating programmes: Aim to detect psychological stress in collaboration with North African Countries (Morocco and Tunisia) based on a 5-Step Approach.
• Publishing books: Addressing common mental health problems in primary care.

World Family Doctor Day 2025

Our campaign will shift the conversation from an unattainable idea of perfect mental health to one of building resilience, adaptability, and balance in an ever-changing world.

Here are our five key themes:

1. Family medicine fosters mental wellness through trust and continuity of care. Primary health care is uniquely positioned to promote mental wellness due to its emphasis on long-term relationships, continuity of care, and patient-centred approaches. Through early intervention, lifestyle medicine, and a holistic understanding of patients' lives, we family doctors can identify and manage mental health challenges before they become crises.
2. Doctor well-being and patient care reinforce each other. Family doctors who look after their own mental wellness are better equipped to care for their patients. At the same time, effectively caring for patients provides doctors with purpose and fulfilment. This cycle ensures that both doctors and patients thrive together, creating a healthier and more resilient healthcare system.
3. Acknowledging suffering and offering hope. The most profound impact a family doctor can have for a struggling patient is to listen—deeply and without judgment. Acknowledging suffering is the first step towards healing, followed by exploration of meaning. By offering compassionate support and realistic hope, family doctors help their patients navigate difficult times and move toward recovery.
4. A thriving doctor means a thriving community. When family doctors are supported, their patients and communities benefit. WONCA fosters a global peer support network that strengthens the family medicine community, ensuring that doctors feel valued and connected, which ultimately enhances patient care and public health.
5. Mental health is about resilience and adaptability. Inspired by the concept of eudaimonia, which consists of the words "eu" ("good") and "daimōn" ("spirit") and defines a contented dynamic process of wellbeing, happiness, health, prosperity, physical/mental independence and active community membership, our goal is to enhance our patients' sense of agency and coherence, and equip them with the ability to navigate life's challenges.

In addition to social media and web-based promotions, our campaign activities will focus on:

1. Collaborative Video: A scripted video message featuring family doctors around the world talking about mental resilience and the role of primary care in mental wellness.
2. Webinar Series: A set of virtual discussions in the weeks leading up to World Family Doctor Day, featuring experts and frontline family doctors, and covering:
   1. Key Concepts for Mental Resilience: Suffering and Hope; Coherence and Engagement; Eudaemonia and Ataraxia.
   2. The Role of Primary Care in Mental Wellness: Practical Strategies for Family Doctors.
   3. Self-Care for Family Doctors: Avoiding Burnout and Building Resilience.
   4. Cultural Approaches to Mental Health: Tailoring Solutions to Local Communities.
   5. Addressing Depression in Primary Care: Lessons from the MDD Minds Project.
   6. The Future of Mental Health in Primary Care: Policy, Advocacy, and Innovation.
3. Global Physical Activity Event: A coordinated walk/run where family doctors worldwide participate, symbolizing movement towards mental resilience.
4. Creative Arts Collaboration: A digital initiative where family doctors share art works, music or perform together virtually to celebrate the day.

Our campaign will launch in Brussels, at the MDD Minds Closing Event on Monday 24 March 2025.