People have the power to kick-start a change in mental health awareness and once they start talking about it politicians will respond, according to mental health campaigner Alastair Campbell.

“The change will only come if we make the change happen and the politicians will only respond to the change. It’s about changing the way people think so the journalists stop saying ‘psycho killer on the loose’... and the government starts investing in mental health,” said Mr Campbell, the former chief strategist of British prime minister Tony Blair.

Mr Campbell, an ambassador for the UK Time to Change mental health campaign, was speaking during a talk titled ‘Why the time to change attitudes towards mental health illness is now’ organised by the Richmond Foundation, an NGO that offers support to people with mental health problems.

The talk was held to launch a national mental health awareness campaign by the foundation.

“Changing attitudes is hard but it can be done,” he said, adding that people once smoked in public spaces and avoided uttering the word cancer by talking about “the big C”.

“All of us have mental health and some days it’s good and sometimes it’s less good. Just like physical health,” he said.

He spoke about the “bad breakdown” he experienced in the mid-1980s when he was arrested for his own safety and drank too much.

At the time, he was a journalist and when, in 1994, Mr Blair asked him to work for him, his past became public interest. He decided to talk about it and never regretted it as it helped other people – but it also helped him.

“I was close to the abyss and I came out,” he said.

Richmond Foundation chief executive Antoinette Shah said one in every four people experienced mental health problems. “The effects are as real as a broken arm even though there isn’t a sling or a cast to show for it... yet it is still surrounded by prejudice, ignorance and fear,” she said.

Jonathan Shaw, member of foundation’s board of trustees, spoke about safeguarding the mental health of children who often had little quality time because of result-driven educational systems and overly ambitious parents.

“Take care of those children. Their mind is a precious, yet powerful, machine,” he said.

President Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca said that, according to a recent study carried out by the office of the Mental Health Commissioner, almost half of people found it difficult or had no clue how to find information about mental health problems like depression and stress.

She recounted how, a year ago, she met a 15-year-old boy who told her he ended up in Mount Carmel Hospital’s young people’s unit and lied not to be given more drugs.

He said he needed help and got it from school and from his friend. The friend told her: “All I do is monitor his Facebook account and whenever I see that he is down I suggest we go for a walk.”

MEP Miriam Dalli, a Richmond Foundation ambassador, spoke about the damage brought about by stigmatisation and the use of negative labels.

“How is it socially acceptable for every other organ in your body to get sick, except for your brain,” she said, stressing the need for a national programme to combat stigmatisation and a publicised crisis line, among other things.