Mental Health Awareness Week is happening between 9 - 15 May. The official theme is ‘loneliness’. Across the week, we encourage you to build meaningful connections with friends, family and colleagues.
Loneliness can be a part of life at any age. Feeling lonely can sometimes be triggered by things like going to university or moving to a new place, retiring or changing jobs, going through a bereavement or a relationship break-up. Many of us have felt lonely in the last two years, as we navigated through lockdowns and working or studying from home.
There is a great deal of content available from the Samaritans website to assist you with your connection building and to allow you to promote the week Mental Health Awareness Week (samaritans.org)
Government Health and Well Being Plan
Very much related to this topic, is the fact that the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care has set out his ambition to develop a new 10-year Mental Health and Wellbeing Plan.
The government wants to make sure that people of all ages at risk of developing a mental health condition, or taking their life, receive help at an earlier stage, and that those who are unwell get the compassion and support they need from the NHS, social care, and beyond.
A ‘Discussion Paper’ has been launched to ask questions about what should be included in this Plan. The paper suggests some ideas and has a survey where you can respond and share your thoughts. You can find the Discussion Paper and the survey here: https://www.gov.uk/talk-mental-health
This is your opportunity to inform future national policy on mental health.
They will also be using responses to the discussion paper to help them to develop a separate national suicide prevention plan, which should be published within the next twelve months.