Time to stop and reflect: it’s Mental Health Awareness Week

What a rollercoaster of a year we’ve had. With its various ups and downs its sure to have taken its toll on our mental health in some form or other. This Mental Health Awareness Week is yet another useful opportunity to stop, reflect and think about our mental health.

Over the last year we’ve been trying to find the time and space to support the mental health of our members, staff and volunteers. To give you just one example, our Elders Team have made more than 6,000 calls to local older people to check in, see how they’re doing and what we can help them with. These regular calls are a great wait to stay in touch and provide that friendship and contact that we’ve all needed during the pandemic.

We’re currently exploring with other great local charities like Battersea Befrienders Network, the Battersea Coronavirus Angels and the Big Local SW11 (amongst others), the idea of setting up a ‘Befriending Across Battersea’ partnership, so that we can take a coordinated approach to supporting the mental health of more local people.

The theme of this year’s Mental Health Awareness Week is nature, and with spring in full bloom what better way to look after ourselves than getting out about into the world, especially as the lockdown is being eased further from 17th May.

There is lots of support out there for our mental health and wellbeing. The excellent Small Charities Coalition have put together this useful list:

1. Get help from a mental health charity helpline – The NHS has provided a list of charities who can help those seeking support with their mental health.
2. Small Charities Coalition Charity Cares – Our Charity Cares Initiative uses the NHS self assessment tools, to help members check-in on themselves.
3. MHRA #ConnectWithNature Campaign – This campaign is a helpful reminder of why the outdoors is so important for our own mental health and wellbeing.
4. Mental Health Prevention Resources & Tools – The Mental Health Foundation’s go-to resources and tools.
5. Uplifting resources for the NHS from the NHS – Although this is targeted to NHS workers, these resources from apps to poems, can be helpful for us all.
6. Headspace App – A really useful app, which supports better sleeping, mindfulness and wellbeing.
7. My Whole Self Campaign – Mental Health First Aid England have produced information on how you can better support POC and black colleagues with their mental health.
8. Beating Burnout: How to make The Wellbeing Toolkit work for you and your team Clore Social Leadership are hosting an event for leaders who want to look after the wellbeing of their team. They have also included their wellbeing toolkit.

And of course, if you live in Battersea and you need a bit of help then then call us on 020 7223 2845 or email us on [email protected]