Harrow Council held a specialist workshop to address mental health issues as it continues its leading work on the subject.

The community event at Harrow Civic Centre, run in partnership with the citywide mental health initiative Thrive LDN, encouraged everyone to come together to make the borough, as a whole, a happier place to live and work.

A number of experts on mental health spoke at during the workshop as the council recommitted to its goal of achieving the six aspirations of Thrive.

These are: empowering individuals and communities to lead change, removing mental health stigma and discrimination, maximising the potential of young people, creating a happy, healthy workforce, offering necessary services and reducing suicide rates to zero.

Harrow Council’s interim chief executive, Tom Whiting, said: “Better mental health starts with a conversation.

“As a council we committed to making Harrow a place where people can talk openly about mental health when we signed the ‘Time To Change’ pledge, and we’re seeing the positive effects of that in our own staff. Now we want the same for everyone who lives and works in Harrow.

“We heard some great ideas for improving Harrow’s mental health, including something as simple as just smiling at each other more.”

It hopes to make mental health a priority for the coming year and has offered training in mental health to managers and businesses across the borough.

Working with health professionals and faith leaders, it will offer feedback from the workshop to the overall Thrive programme in a bid to improve mental health in Harrow and London as a whole.

Cllr Adam Swersky, responsible for business at Harrow Council, said: “Mental health is everyone’s business.

“The Thrive programme shows us that we all need to take responsibility for making our borough a place that supports good mental health and allows us to be open when we aren’t feeling so great.

“I’m proud of how far we’ve come on mental health, but the journey’s only just begun.”