ISWAN’s Regional Director in South East Asia, Jun Pablo, was invited to give a presentation on mental health to staff at Anthony Veder’s Leadership Officers’ Conference in Rotterdam.
Held on 24 - 26 September 2019 at the Worldhotel Wings in Rotterdam, Netherlands, the conference was attended by around 60-70 masters, chief engineers and shoreside staff with nationalities including Russian, Ukrainian, Dutch, Japanese, Indonesian and Latvian. The conference looked at the principle of ‘Secure Base Leadership’, which focuses on humanising leadership by putting an emphasis on caring for people (secure) rather than just the daring side (risk).
ISWAN had previously delivered a presentation on mental health to bosuns and ratings at Anthony Veder in Indonesia back in April, and the company was keen to bring the same messages to its ships’ officers. ISWAN’s Jun Pablo spoke to officers at the conference about the factors affecting seafarers’ mental wellbeing on board, focusing his presentation on mental health awareness. He discussed the biopsychosocial effects of stress and demonstrated with case studies that stress which isn’t properly addressed could be the ‘breaking’ of a ship’s crew, but it can also become their ‘making’ if it is managed well. Role play and other activities were used to show the practical element of dealing with mental health on board, particularly managing emotions.
