Mind and Rethink Mental Illness are encouraging communities to come together this February 6th as part of Time to Talk Day, a campaign to support people to have conversations about mental health with family, friends and colleagues.
Here at Healthwatch Essex, we aim to start these conversations year-round by listening to people’s experiences with health and social care. By highlighting people’s lived experiences as patients and carers, we aim to inform the way services are designed and delivered. As part of today’s Time to Talk Day, we are showcasing some of the reflections on mental health that people have shared with us over the past year.
Our Trauma Ambassador Group brings together people with experience of trauma. The group raises awareness of the effects of living with trauma, encourages people to access support, and educates those commissioning and delivering services. Their recent exhibitions, titled ‘Expressions of Trauma’, showcased a range of artwork created by people living with the effects of trauma, and by sharing these creative works, the exhibitions raised awareness of trauma and fostered empathy for those living with its effects.
We also highlighted the experience of one of our Trauma Ambassadors, Megan, in National Carers’ Week last July, who told us about becoming a full-time carer at the age of 13 and the effect it had on her, and how she has drawn on these experiences to advocate for change in the healthcare system.
Over the past year, we have used the insights that carers have shared with us to ensure that carers feel supported. This was the case when a carer attending one of our focus groups, Susan, shared that she felt out of place as other people in the group were wearing lanyards and attending as ‘professionals’. We have since made changes to ensure that everyone feels welcome, such as offering sticky labels for everyone to display their names so that no one feels insignificant in mixed groups of carers and professionals. You can read more about ‘Susan’s Law’ here.
As part of our collaboration with the Essex Faith Covenant, we also put a spotlight on faith and mental health through Hannah Kelly, chair of Essex Faith Covenant, shared her story of being diagnosed with OCD as a practising Catholic on our blog.
Our ongoing work is looking into people’s experiences of receiving support for mental health in North East Essex. This work focuses on people’s experiences getting support for mental health crises and suicidal ideation in Colchester and Tendring, and we want to hear about the challenges people faced and what you think could be improved. By bringing people’s insights together in a report, we hope to create positive changes in the way future services are delivered locally. If you would like to share your story of getting support, you can find our survey here.
If you’re interested in joining the conversation about mental health this Time to Talk Day, why not have a look through some of their tips for opening up and supporting others? You can also find Time to Talk Day’s resources for organising events and activities for creating a supportive community on their website, while Mind’s Conversations in the Community online course offers more in-depth material for anyone looking to learn about how you can support others with their mental health.
Joe Pearce, Research Officer