Category: Help and Advice

If news reports of rising temperatures, melting ice caps, or forest fires fill you with dread and anxiety, you aren’t alone. You might be experiencing ‘climate anxiety’, and while it is a relatively new term, it’s on the rise and particularly affects young people. 

Christmas is the time of year when we’re expected to be our merriest and most joyful. There are friends and family to see, and a wealth of opportunities to have fun and let loose. For some of us, our reality during the festivities is far from this. It can be a stressful time of year with family duties, financial strain, pressure to keep to traditions and tricky logistics. It can also brings up some difficult emotional experiences, such as trauma and grief. So how can we navigate these challenges and protect our mental health?

We asked Mental Health UK’s staff what they do to boost their mood and look after their mental health in the winter. And they were brimming with ideas! Take inspiration from some of their strategies to help you feel brighter and cope better this winter.

Fundraiser, Luke Hamer tells us why putting his mental health first made him stronger – as part of our World Mental Health Day campaign encouraging people to make their mental health a priority.

Tying in with our World Mental Health Day campaign encouraging people to make their mental health a priority, our colleague Gemma tells us why looking after her mental health is integral to her quality of life. 

Some of us look forward to the autumn, with the promise of cosy jumpers,  hot drinks and spending more time indoors. For some people the upcoming weeks are less appealing, with fewer daylight hours and colder temperatures. As the seasons change, you may notice a shift in your mental health. We’ve put together some helpful guidance on how to manage the transition to autumn and avoid it negatively impacting mental health.

27-year-old Zany lost her close friend to suicide five years ago. Like many people who are bereaved by suicide, she experienced a complex set of emotions following his death and grappled with a sense of detachment and hopelessness. She tells us her story about what helped her to address her grief.

The Covid-19 pandemic had a profound impact on the mental health and wellbeing of people across the globe. But as we return to a semblance of the lives we had pre-Covid, we are being gripped by an unprecedented cost-of-living crisis in this country.

Our peer support platform, Clic, has recently extended its reach by setting up the ‘Homes for Refugees’ community – to offer support to households across the UK who are hosting refugees or asylum seekers or thinking about doing so.