This week is Mental Health Awareness Week, an annual national event encouraging the UK to focus on achieving good mental health.
The Mental Health Foundation launched the event 21 years ago, and it has since grown to become one of the biggest awareness weeks in the country.
Mental Health Awareness week is open to everyone and aims to start conversations about mental health and the things in our daily lives that can affect it. The week provides an opportunity for people to talk about all aspects of mental health, with a focus on providing help and advice.
The theme of this year’s event is nature, and everyone is encouraged to think about connecting with nature and thinking about how nature can improve our mental health.
Being in nature is known to be an effective way of tackling mental health problems and of protecting our wellbeing. During lockdown, nature has played a vital part in supporting mental health. According to research carried out by the Mental Health Foundation, last summer half of people in the UK said that being in nature was a favoured way to cope with the stress of the pandemic.
We can connect with nature in the countryside, a park or garden, coast, lakes and rivers, wilderness, plants or wildlife closer to home – or even nature that we see or interact with in or from our homes. The theme of Mental Health Awareness Week this year is to help more people across the UK to notice nature, and make a habit of connecting to it in some small way every day.
The organisers of Mental Health Awareness Week hope that by raising awareness of the importance of nature for improving mental health, they can work to ensure that everyone can share in it.
To find out more about Mental Health Awareness week, visit https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/ where you’ll also discover a wealth of helpful resources and advice about looking after your mental health.