People’s lives improve dramatically if they have access to work opportunities, according to the organisers of World Mental Health Day. Cris Allen reports

World Mental Health Day (WMHD) is on 10 October and the theme is ‘work’. Indeed, so important does the World Federation for Mental Health (WFMH) consider work to be that it has designated this as its focus for both 2000 and 2001. The literature from the Federation in support of WMHD proclaims that ‘work is a multi-faceted topic of contrasting extremes’ (WFMH 2000).