Mental Health Awareness Week launches next week

Find out how you and your team can get involved and back to nature…

Did you know that since the start of the pandemic millions of us turned to nature to help us get through the lockdowns over the last year?

During next week’s Mental Health Awareness Week (MHAW) on 10-16 May, the Mental Health Foundation is encouraging us to celebrate and share the mental health benefits of being around nature in our garden or local area.

This year’s theme is ‘nature’ and how connecting with the natural world can help improve our mental health.

The Mental Health Foundation’s research has also shown that being in nature, which is all around us, has been one of the most popular ways the public have tried to sustain good mental health at a challenging time.

During MHAW, we want as many of you as possible to think about connecting with nature. However, the week is also about getting people talking about any aspect of mental health, regardless of the theme.

What you can do at the CCG

Display a MHAW Teams background

Like the Mental Health Foundation, we’ve created some Teams backgrounds you can use throughout next week. We hope they will help spark a conversation and raise awareness of mental health either at the start or end of your meetings. You can choose to display one of the following backgrounds:

Post a message on the MHAW interactive whiteboard on Teams

Another way you can get involved and show your support is to add a message to the interactive whiteboard we’ve set up in the Staff Room channel on Teams.

We encourage you to use this space to leave your comments or thoughts throughout the week on anything relating to mental health. Here are some examples:

express something or someone you’re grateful for (however big or small)
write one thing that makes you happy (and set yourself at least half an hour to do that thing)
share what you’re going to do to connect with nature

To access the interactive whiteboard, login to Microsoft Teams and go to the ‘Staff Room’ channel by clicking on the Teams icon on the left-hand menu. You may have to click on ‘hidden channels’ for the Staff Room to appear or type ‘Staff Room’ in the search bar at the top.

Some more ways you can participate in MHAW

Stop to listen to the birdsong, smell the freshly cut grass, take care of a house plant, notice any trees, flowers or animals nearby. Take a moment to appreciate these connections
Share images and videos of the nature on your doorstep and how this made you feel. Post them on social media using #ConnectWithNature and #MentalHealthAwarenessWeek or send them to the Comms team and we’ll publish them on the AskHUE Gallery.

Jacquie Clements, one of our Mental Health First Aiders, talks about what the Urgent Care team has planned to join in with Mental Health Awareness Week.

“We will be encouraging all team members to take a photo of nature and share the story behind the photo with their colleagues. The photo will symbolise something that makes them smile. This could be in the garden, on a dog walk or family day out.

“We will also be encouraging the team to take a photo of part of an object outside in the garden and the team will try and identify the object from the snapshot. This hopefully will bring some laughter along with it!” says Jacquie.

Support, advice and guidance

If you’re struggling at the moment and life is getting on top of you, you can reach out and speak to one of our Mental Health First Aiders. They are on hand if you need a friendly ear and will listen without judgement to whatever you have to say.

You can also find a variety of other support services available on our Health and wellbeing support page on AskHUE.

For more information, visit the Mental Health Foundation website. Join the conversation on social media using #ConnectWithNature and #MentalHealthAwarenessWeek