Crew Mental Wellbeing in the Spotlight
5 November 2020
Crew mental health and wellbeing have come to the forefront of many conversations within the yachting industry, with more and more yacht crew coming forward to share their struggles and multiple yachting organisations responding with services to support them.
Due to the increased pressure and uncertainty placed on crew this year due to the pandemic, mental health and wellbeing has never been so important.
One of the organisations leading the response to crew wellbeing and providing a 24-hour helpline for seafarers all over the world, is ISWAN.
ISWAN's Yacht Crew Help - Launching Soon
In addition to their general helpline for seafarers, ISWAN will be launching an additional 24/7 helpline via their 'Yacht Crew Help' website which will provide specialised wellbeing support for yacht crew worldwide.
The PYA is dedicated to improving the mental health and wellbeing support available to yacht crew, so we have been working closely with ISWAN as a supporting organisation behind the development of this service.
This website is due to go live in November 2020, so we will follow-up with the full details on how you can access this service.
Sailor's Society Launches Wellbeing Petition
The Sailor's Society is a charity offering welfare, chaplaincy, mental health support and crisis response to seafarers and their families around the world. They too run a 24/7 helpline for seafarers, plus a number of chaplains situated in ports worldwide.
In addition to this support, they run a number of campaigns to advocate on behalf of seafarers and raise awareness of the issues they face to promote their welfare within the maritime industry and to the general public.
Recently, the Sailor's Society launched a petition to make wellbeing training a mandatory part of the Maritime Labour Convention (MLC). By providing wellbeing training to seafarers, they hope that this will reduce the prevalence of depression and suicide amongst seafarers. The PYA is supporting this initiative and intends to be proactive as it develops.
Sign the petition.
More news
Important tasks for your crew this winter
It’s that time of year in the Mediterranean and other northern hemisphere yachting locations when many vessels are lined up in ports for the winter whilst a portion of their crew stay onboard to undertake the important task of ‘winterising’, as well as other key maintenance jobs which didn’t get addressed during the busy summer months of chartering.
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Yacht Job Scams on the Rise
Over the last couple of months, the PYA's Member Assistance Service (MAS) has received a number of reports from crew who have been approached by scammers offering false jobs onboard yachts. Along with these direct reports, there has also been a number of incidents reported via the Yacht Crew Facebook Groups.
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