This year for Mental Health Awareness Week (14-20 May), the focus is on stress.
Research has shown that two thirds of us experience a mental health problem in our lifetimes, and stress has been identified as a key factor in this.
By tackling stress, we can go a long way to tackle mental health problems such as anxiety and depression, and, in some instances, self-harm and suicide.
This year the Mental Health Foundation are encouraging people to run a ‘Curry & Chaat’ event, part of the charity’s new fundraising campaign. The aim of the scheme is simple: get together with friends, enjoy a delicious curry and raise money for the Mental Health Foundation and its vision of a “world with good mental health for all”.
Ways to get involved and bring people together to start conversations around mental health include:
- Host a wellbeing walk - with friends, colleagues or people in your community
- Set up a stand in your local hospital, community centre, library or supermarket
- Hold a series of lectures or talks on mental health - make it interactive as possible and get the audience involved!
Tackling poor mental health must be a priority. The reality is that any of us can be affected by mental health at any time, so we need to do all we can to raise awareness.
Progress is being made with more Government investment in mental health and an estimated 1,400 more people accessing mental health services every day compared to 2010, as well as around 750,000 more people accessing talking therapies since 2009/10.
But much more still needs to be done. The Mental Health Foundation have rightly chosen stress as this year’s theme, I encourage people in Fareham to look into joining their campaign and to find out about how they can get involved.
Find out more on the Mental Health Foundation’s website: www.mentalhealth.org.uk